Chris Hemsworth and Tom Holland’s 2015 survival drama In the Heart of the Sea is now trending on Netflix, and its heartbreaking true story provides a good reminder to watch Netflix’s own similar film from January 2024. While framed around one of the survivors recounting the tale to Herman Melville, serving as inspiration for his novel Moby Dick, In the Heart of the Sea explores the true story behind the 1820 sinking of the whaling ship Essex. After the ship is wrecked by a sperm whale, twenty crew members resort to drastic measures before being rescued, with the majority dying at sea.
Netflix’s Society of the Snow is another true story-inspired survival drama like In the Heart of the Sea. Both are based on real-life tragedies, with In the Heart of the Sea telling the story of the 1820 sinking of the whaling ship Essex, while Society of the Snow is based on the 1972 Andes plane crash. Both stories feature survivors fighting to stay alive, searching for rescue, and resorting to unimaginable strategies to find sustenance.
In the case of In the Heart of the Sea, the survivors of the shipwreck were split into three smaller boats, with many dying due to injury, starvation, and illness. Eventually, they made the difficult decision to resort to cannibalism and eat the dead to stay alive. Similarly, the real-life chain of events after the plane crash in Society of the Snow saw the survivors dwindling gradually due to injury, illness, suffocation, starvation, and freezing temperatures, leading them to reluctantly resort to cannibalizing the dead until they were finally rescued.
Despite In the Heart of the Sea receiving mixed reviews and being a box office bomb, its harrowing true story is still worth watching. Society of the Snow, on the other hand, was met with widespread acclaim and holds a 90% Rotten Tomatoes score. Both films are a testament to the human spirit’s capacity for survival in the face of unimaginable tragedy.