'The Survivalist' : Profound Post Apocalyptic Realities.

"Man's inhumanity to man."

The Survivalist is a brutally honest post apocalyptic thriller. It is a harrowingly harsh depiction of  the realities of living in a world where everything becomes simplified, yet still hints towards mannerisms of modern civilization. Stephen Fingleton was able to portray this story in a very understated yet suspenseful manner. Mark Kermode wrote in The Guardian describing the film: "The Survivalist is a stripped-down exercise in cinematic exposition that suggests its creator is a major talent in the making." As an Irish native, I was worried that upon hearing the accents, they would make me cringe as they usually do whenever hearing them on TV and film; but to my luck the film isn't heavily dialogue based! Even still, much alike the rest of the film, the dialogue was very much understated and the actors abilities were able to shine through because of it. The Survivalist is based around the life of an unnamed man who exists off the grid, and by his wits. When a starving woman and her teenage daughter discover his forest refuge, his suspicions are raised but he strikes a deal of sex in exchange for food. The exchange becomes an uneasy, ongoing arrangement which threatens not only his carefully constructed world but also his life.

The opening sequence of The Survivalist cleverly suggests the situation in which the film is set: the two lines on a graph follow one showing oil production and the other world population. While the oil one starts to reduce, the population one continues its climb until a sudden plummet. This subtle show don't tell approach at exposition was very cleverly delivered, and in turn was meticulously able to set up the viewer for the story. Tara Brady wrote in The Irish Times, describing the storytelling as: "pitilessly and commendably economic." Following from the opening, we are then lead into the life of the protagonist played by Martin McCann; doing what means necessary in order to survive, and in his case we see him carrying and burying corpses, assumed to be people who have trespassed on his land. These scenes are accompanied with only diegetic sounds, heightening the overall atmosphere of the setting. This continues throughout the film due to the lack of score or background music; our awareness of the surroundings are made prominent, which is further exaggerated upon hearing the notes of the harmonica humming. Despite this, tension is still very much built and present in certain scenes without the use of a score.

Scene in The Survivalist

When meeting the mother and daughter characters, the protagonist becomes instinctively cautious and suspicious, but is eventually coerced out of isolation through the promise of sex.  Although the sex scenes bare all for the two characters, there is no real sense of sexuality or passion portrayed in the scenes, which simplifies the sexual interactions as a basic animal instinct. Graham Fuller described this element in his article saying how, "One selling point is Fingleton’s discreet rendering of the sexual relationship between the raw-boned protagonist and the enigmatic daughter. Though Goth’s partial nudity will provoke equal prurience and criticism, it’s neither gratuitous nor eroticised." However the sexual relationship between the two characters leads to an eventual bonding of them, as we see the daughter then turn against her own mother in favour of the protagonist as their original intention was to possibly kill him and take over the small farm he constructed.


The lack of dialogue throughout the film gave great opportunity to the actors in showing their skill. McCann was truly the talent of The Survivalist, his performance was truly outstanding and in turn very well directed. His performance was able to provide strong facial expressions that well convey emotions that would otherwise remain unexpressed.

The naturally lit, murky hue the cinematography illustrates, as seen in the images below, are very much reflective of the vast, open land that they reside in. The use of the bleak and muted tones of browns and green are very emphatic of rural Ireland and this setting couldn't be accurately portrayed any other way. Tara Brady described it as, "An already earthy film, offset with animalistic impulses, is punctuated by Damien Elliot’s stealthy tracking shots through verdant wilderness." The use of colours in The Survivalist are very emblematic to the aesthetic of the setting.

Example of the hue in The Survivalist

Example of the hue in The Survivalist

The overall impression The Survivalist offers is striping humanity down to the core. It didn't try to take on a large topic. To give the film a star rating, it would be a 3.5/4 out of 5 stars. It wasn't fun or nice or had a happy ending, just a well told story. Fingleton doesn't spend much time in outright nail-biter mode, a few smartly conceived scenes underline the vulnerability that comes with this little house's seclusion in the woods.Many movies are trying to be more than they are, and this wasn't one of them.