When a violent storm nearly capsizes them, the family awakens in a desert land. Earth has undergone a catastrophic polarity reversal, draining water from the oceans. A film by Frédéric Jardin, starring Émilie Dequenne, Andreas Pietschmann, Lisa Delamar, Lucas Ebel, Arben Bajraktaraj, and Olivier Ho Hio Hen.
SURVIVRE
SURVIVE
Frédéric Jardin
(2024)
La Terre depuis sa formation a connu cinq extinctions. La sixième commence.
In the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Puerto Rico, German oceanographer Tom (Andreas Pietschmann) from the University of Miami takes his wife Julia (Émilie Dequenne), a doctor, and their children Cassie (Lisa Delamar) and Ben (Lucas Ebel) on a yacht vacation aboard the Orca to celebrate Ben’s 13th birthday.
While their teenage daughter Cassie is absorbed in music through her headphones and Tom teaches Ben how to fish at the stern of the yacht, Julia decides to take a solitary swim in the sea. Suddenly, she notices a change in the current as it begins pulling her away from the vessel. Despite her efforts to swim back to the yacht, the current proves too powerful. She calls out for help, but her screams go unheard. As Julia begins to struggle against drowning, Tom realizes she’s no longer on board and finally spots her in the water. He quickly rescues her and brings her safely back to the yacht. Shaken by the incident, Tom establishes a rule: anyone going for a swim must inform others first and stay close to the boat for safety.
That evening, while video chatting with her boyfriend Adam (Simon Rérolle) about a party he wants her to attend that weekend, Cassie notices unusual lightning clouds in the sky behind him. The video stream suddenly begins to stutter before freezing completely as the connection drops, leaving Cassie frustrated at the lost signal.
Later, several fiery meteorites begin plunging into the sea near their boat. Tom maneuvers the vessel, trying to stay clear of the impact zones, but the engine suddenly fails completely, leaving them stranded. As another meteorite crashes into the water beside their boat, they realize that what they thought were meteorites are actually floating pieces of a destroyed satellite.
The family takes shelter in the cabin as a vicious storm hits, hoping to wait it out until rescue arrives. They lose consciousness, and when they awake the next morning, they discover their vessel stranded on what was once the ocean floor, now inexplicably dry land.
After analyzing the situation, Tom makes a startling discovery: the Earth’s magnetic poles have reversed, an event that hasn’t occurred for more than 700,000 years. This phenomenon explains their bizarre predicament – the oceans have shifted away from their normal positions, flooding what was once land while leaving former seabeds exposed.
After repairing the radio, Tom sends out a distress call in search of other survivors. He receives a response from Noa (Olivier Ho Hio Hen), captain of the Shanghai 6500, a scientific bathyscaphe. Noa confirms Tom’s theory about the magnetic pole reversal but also warns Tom that his instruments indicate another reversal will occur in less than a week. He urges Tom to seek higher ground before the ocean waters return to their original position. Realizing they won’t be able to reach safety in time, Tom makes a desperate plea to Noa – to take their children aboard the bathyscaphe, which can only accommodate three people.
Noa provides Tom with the bathyscaphe’s coordinates, revealing it’s two to three days’ journey from their current position. Tom and Julia gather essential supplies as they prepare for their desperate race against time to save their children, unaware that even greater dangers await them.
A bathyscaphe is a type of deep-sea submersible vessel designed for underwater exploration. It consists of two main components: a heavily reinforced steel crew cabin that houses the crew and withstands immense pressure, and a buoyant tank filled with a liquid such as gasoline, which provides lift due to its incompressibility and buoyancy. Bathyscaphes are capable of reaching extreme depths, such as the Mariana Trench, which is the deepest part of the ocean.
First of all, I’m impressed by the cinematography by French cinematographer Pierre Aïm, especially in how it captures post-apocalyptic elements with surrealist power despite a moderate budget compared to Hollywood disaster blockbusters. The film creates haunting visuals through minimalist yet effective settings: endless rocky deserts punctuated by decaying whale, swamps contaminated with toxic waste containers, and mountains of accumulated plastic debris.
Directed by French filmmaker Frédéric Jardin from a screenplay written by Matt Alexander, SURVIVRE is a disaster film centered around a family who find themselves stranded at the bottom of the sea during an extinction event that nearly wipes out the entire planet as they try to save their children.
While the characters struggle with questionable decision-making and behavior, as if the writer has watched Hollywood disaster films and decided to do everything in the opposite manner, the story succeeds in multiple strange plot twists. For example, the main character is killed off too early, and the villainous antagonist relentlessly stalks the family, much like Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th series.
I also love the idea of flesh-eating, monstrous crabs emerging from the abyss to kill everyone. Although SURVIVRE may not reach its full potential due to a limited budget and its unusual narrative, it remains a memorable disaster film with an intriguing premise and stunning cinematography.
SURVIVRE was theatrically in France on 19 June 2024. SURVIVE received a limited theatrical release in the United States on 10 January 2025 and was simultaneously made available on VOD on the same day.
