The Best Survival Movies

Wether it is surviving a disaster, nuclear wars, sci-fi alien invasions, zombies or plagues, the best survival movies cover a broad range of genres. Here is my list of some of them.

Wilderness Survival Movies

1. The Edge After a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness billionaire Charles Morse and self-satisfied fashion photographer Robert Green battle mother nature in a brutal struggle for survival.
2. The Way Back Inspired by an incredible true story seven prisoners attempt the impossible: escape from a brutal Siberian gulag. Thus begins a treacherous 4,500-mile trek to freedom across the world’s most merciless landscapes.
3. The Grey When their plane crashes into the remote Alaskan wilderness, the survivors only have a few days to escape the icy elements and a vicious pack of rogue wolves on the hunt.
4. 127 Hours The true story of mountain climber Aron Ralston’s remarkable adventure to save himself after a fallen boulder traps him in an isolated canyon in Utah.
5. Into the Wild This is the true story of Christopher McCandless who walked out of his privileged life and into the wild in search of adventure.
6. Alive The true story of a rugby team stranded in the Andes after a plane crash.
7. The Snow Walker When the plane carrying Charlie Halliday, a maverick bush pilot and a sick, young, Inuit woman crashes hundreds of miles from civilization, they are at the mercy of natures worst.
8. Death Hunt When a trapper saves the life of a dog and is accused of murder, he is forced to defend his freedom in in the ice-cold mountains near the Yukon river.
9. Eight Below A man struggles to save his dogs in an Arctic storm.
10. Never Cry Wolf When a biologist studies wild wolves accused of killing herds he is forced to learn survival skills from the aged Eskimo who saves his life and the rules of coexistence from a neighboring wolf.
11. Jeremiah Johnson Story about a19th century mountain man surviving in a wilderness of harsh elements and savage Indians.
12. Swiss Family Robinson Tale of a family after they are shipwrecked on a deserted island.
13. Cast Away A FedEx employee whose ruled-by-the-clock existence abruptly ends when a plane crash leaves him isolated on a remote island.
14. Life of Pi After a shipwreck, young Pi Patel finds himself stranded on a lifeboat with the only other survivor – a ferocious Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.
15. Backcountry In this terrifying thriller based on a true story, a young couple’s romantic camping trip becomes a tale of survival as they face the dark side of nature: a man-eating bear.
16. Into The Grizzly MazeJames Marsden, Thomas Jane, Piper Perabo and Billy Bob Thornton must face off with a relentless killer grizzly in this action-packed adventure set in the Alaskan wilderness.
17. The Revenant Inspired by true events, The Revenant follows the story of legendary explorer Hugh Glass on his epic quest for survival and justice.

Post Apocalyptic Movies

1. The Day In a post-apocalyptic future, a group of survivors must make a desperate final stand over 24 hours.
2. The Book of Eli A lone warrior wanders the post-apocalyptic desert that was once America, battling lawlessness to realize his hope of a better future.
3. The Road An epic post-apocalyptic tale of the survival of a father and his young son as they journey across a barren America that was destroyed by a mysterious cataclysm.
4. The Divide Survivors of a nuclear attack endure days in the basement of their apartment building, only to be driven mad by dwindling supplies and fear of what lies outside their bunker.
5. Hell In the not too distant future, people struggle to survive their greatest enemy, the sun.
6. The Road Warrior Mad Max joins forces with nuclear holocaust survivors to defend an oil refinery under siege from a ferocious, marauding horde that plunders the land for gasoline.
7. Cyborg A martial artist hunts a killer in a plague-infested urban dump of the future.
8. Doomsday An action-packed thrill-ride through a post apocalyptic hell!
9. Escape from New York A thrilling vision of a lone warrior battling his way out of a post-apocalyptic Manhattan!
10. The Postman Kevin Costner directs and stars in this action-filled epic set in a post-apocalyptic American West. In the year 2013, a massive warhas left most of the country in total disarray.
11. Snowpiercer An ice age kills off all life on earth except for the people of the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe and is powered by perpetual-motion engine.
12. The Colony As an ice age engulfs the Earth, humans struggle to survive in remote underground outposts.
13. Mad Max: Fury Road In a post-apocalyptic world, Max teams up with a mysterious woman, Furiosa, to try and survive.
14. The Survivalist When two women foraging for food and shelter discover a survivalist living off a small plot of land hidden deep in the forest, his existence is threatened.
15. Into the Forest After a wide spread power outage, two sisters have to survive on their own in their secluded rural cabin.
16. It Comes at Night Secure in an isolated home an unknown threat terrorizes the world, a man, his wife and son struggle for survival when a desperate young family arrives seeking food and shelter.

Invasion / War Survival Movies

1. Red Dawn In this non-stop, death-defying action thriller, the outbreak of World War III has occurred, leaving a group of mid-western high school students turned refugees to slowly organize themselves into an effective guerilla force. The group becomes sophisticated enough to challenge and take on Soviet invaders.
2. Tomorrow When The War Began is Australia’s Red Dawn. A new film about seven friends who return from a weekend camping trip to discover that a foreign army has invaded their Australian homeland.
3. Rescue Dawn An American pilot is shot down and taken prisoner during the Vietnam War. His iron will to survive guides him and fellow prisoners in a death-defying escape, only to discover the harsh realities of an unforgiving jungle outside the POW camp.
4. Behind Enemy Lines A Navy navigator is shot down over enemy territory and is ruthlessly pursued by a secret police enforcer and the opposing troops. Meanwhile his commanding officer goes against orders in an attempt to rescue him.
5. Independence Day  First thought to be meteors, they are later revealed to be gigantic spacecraft, piloted by a mysterious alien species who have set out to launch an attack throughout the globe.
6. War of the Worlds A phenemonal adaptation of H.G. Wells’ sci-fi classic.
7. Battle: Los Angeles  A Marine staff sergeant and his platoon take on an enemy unlike any they have ever encountered when hostile alien invaders attack the planet in this epic sci-fi action film.
8. Battleship  An international naval coalition becomes the world’s last hope for survival as they engage a hostile alien force in this epic action-adventure. Stars Taylor Kitsch and Liam Neeson.
9. They Live  Aliens are systematically gaining control of the earth by masquerading as humans and lulling the public into submission.
10. The Thing  At an Antarctica research site, the discovery of an alien craft leads to a confrontation between graduate student and scientist Dr. Sander Halvorson.
11. Red Dawn (2012) A full arsenal of pulse-pounding excitement in this explosive action-adventure! The unsuspecting citizens of Spokane, Washington, wake up one morning to the shocking sight of foreign paratroopers dropping from the sky in a surprise attack on the United States. Soon the entire city is under enemy control, but a group of courageous teenagers has decided to fight back, by waging an all-out war against the invaders, to take back their town – and their freedom!
12. Slither Intent on devouring all life on Earth, this dark force is infecting anyone in its path. Now, it’s up to the local sheriff and his team to stop the spread of rampant infection.
13. Rambo: First Blood John Rambo a Green Beret veteran takes on a Pacific Northwest sheriff and the National Guard.

End of the World / Armageddon Movies

1. 2012 As the world faces a catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions, cities collapse and continents crumble. 2012 brings an end to the world and tells of the heroic struggle of the survivors.
2. Armageddon Earth has 18 days before it’s obliterated by a meteor the size of Texas, he has only one option — land a ragtag team of roughneck oil drillers on the asteroid and drop a nuclear warhead into its core.
3. Deep Impact While scientists build a cave to prevent the extinction of the human race, they estimate that only 800,000 people can be selected to survive the “Deep Impact.”
4. Miracle Mile Edwards intercepts a frantic call from a soldier stationed at a midwestern missile silo. The message: nuclear warheads have been launched, and it’s only 70 minutes to Armageddon.
5. The Day After  When Cold War tensions reach the ultimate boiling point, the inhabitants of a small town in Kansas learn along with the rest of America that they have fewer than 30 minutes before 300 Soviet warheads begin to appear overhead!

Zombie Apocalypse / Plague Movies

1. 28 Days Later An infirmary patient awakens from a coma to an empty room…in a vacant hospital…in a deserted city. A powerful virus, which locks victims into a permanent state of murderous rage, has transformed the world around him into a seemingly desolate wasteland. Now a handful of survivors must fight to stay alive.
2. 28 Weeks Later  28 WEEKS LATER, the follow-up to the hugely successful 28 Days Later.
3. Dawn of the Dead When a mysterious virus turns people into mindless, flesh-eating zombies, a handful of survivors wage a desperate, last-stand battle to stay alive…and human.
4. Night of the Living Dead It’s a new dawn for terror when the dead come back to feast on the living in this contemporary version of the horror classic.
5. I Am Legend Robert Neville is the last man alive. He busies himself with preparing for a nightly attack from the rest of the world – all of which have transformed into blood-thirsty vampires.
6. Zombieland  Nerdy college student Columbus has survived the plague that has turned mankind into flesh-devouring zombies because he’s scared of just about everything. Gun-toting, Twinkie-loving Tallahassee has no fears. Together, they are about to stare down their most horrifying challenge yet: each other’s company.
7. Quarantine A reporter and her cameraman are trapped in downtown Los Angeles where a mysterious deadly and highly contagious strain of rabies has broken out resulting in a quarantine of the building and all its residents.
8. Quarantine 2: Terminal In this sequel to the terrifying hit Quarantine, the virus has escaped the infected building and is now on board a late-night flight? Where no one is safe from infection.
9. Stake Land  America is a lost nation. When an epidemic of vampirism strikes and his family is slaughtered, young Martin is taken under the wing of a grizzled, wayward hunter whose new prey are the undead.
10. The Horde Trapped in a high-rise, a mismatched group of cops and criminals must join forces against a relentless army of flesh-starved zombies.
11. World War Z  An ex UN investigator is thrust into the middle of trying to stop a zombie apocalypse.
12. Contracted A young woman has a one-night stand with a random stranger and contracts a mysterious disease.
13. 30 Days Of Night In a small Alaskan town, a growing band of bloodthirsty vampires thrust the living into a deadly game of cat and mouse and screams.
14. Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse  When their peaceful town is ravaged by a zombie invasion three scouts and lifelong friends join forces with a cocktail waitress to become the world’s most unlikely team of heroes.
15. Train to Busan During a massive zombie virus outbreak in South Korea, passengers on a train from Seoul to Busan find themselves struggling to survive.
16. Daylights End A rogue drifter stumbles across a band of survivors after a mysterious plague devastates the planet and turns most of humanity into blood-hungry zombies.

Misc. Survival Movies

1. Frozen A typical day on the slopes turns into a chilling nightmare for three snowboarders when they get stranded on the chairlift before their last run. As the ski patrol switches off the night lights, they realize with growing panic that they’ve been left behind, dangling high off the ground with no way down.
2. Take Shelter Curtis LaForche lives in a small town in Ohio with his wife, Samantha, and daughter, Hannah, a six-year-old deaf girl. When Curtis begins to have terrifying dreams, he keeps the visions to himself.
3. Into The Storm The town of Silverton is ravaged by an unprecedented onslaught of tornadoes and storm trackers predict the worst is yet to come.
4. Noah is the epic film inspired by the story of courage, sacrifice and hope.
5. San Andreas After the San Andreas Fault triggered a magnitude 9 earthquake, a rescue helicopter pilot and his estranged wife make their way to San Francisco to save their only daughter.