Nervous flyers, look away now. The Spanish director JA Bayona (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom; The Impossible) brings his considerable skills as an action director to the much-filmed real-life story of the crash of Uruguayan air force flight 571 in the icy peaks of the Andes in 1972. The incident, and the subsequent 72-day ordeal of the survivors, who had to resort to cannibalism, has been the subject of numerous documentaries and movies (including Frank Marshall’s Alive). But for the visceral, teeth-rattling intensity of its plane crash sequence, and a subsequent, equally heart-stopping avalanche, Society of the Snow is in a league of its own.
Of course, this is a story of survival and endurance, so the nerve- and fuselage-shredding crash is only a small part of the picture. Much of the film is taken up with waiting, and with wrangling the tricky moral issues inherent in staying alive. But while there are moments in which the film’s generous running time starts to take its toll, Bayona’s smart decision to make this a tale of both the survivors and victims brings a nervy uncertainty to the story, even if we all know broadly how it ends.