Water, water everywhere, and not a damn way to get home. That’s this week’s gallery theme: Movies where we see people trapped on the open seas, inspired by Adrift , starring Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin as two young lovers whose boat is incapacitated after sailing directly into a catastrophic hurricane (and with Claflin’s character suffering from a life-threatening injury). Likewise, the movies in this gallery see heroes under immense pier pressure when their boats get hijacked, destroyed, or worse of all, disappeared all together.
Note: Because a lot of movies fall under this theme, we’re not including submarine movies (Das Boot , Below , Black Sea ) or movies where the heroes can generally head home at any time (Jaws , The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou ).
Open Water (2004, 72%)
A young married couple take a much-deserved scuba vacation. They dive deep and then
surface…only to discover their boat group has left without them, leaving them only with the
sharks circling below.
The Perfect Storm (2000,
47%)
Fishermen with poor hauls of fish, the temptation of a last big score of the season, weather
fronts and a hurricane, human error and a broken ice machine all lead to…the perfect
storm .
Triangle (2009, 80%)
A group of friends forced to abandon their pleasure craft are lucky enough to come across an
adrift boat at sea…and unlucky enough to discover someone is hunting them down aboard.
Life of Pi (2012, 87%)
A young Indian boy’s trip to a new life in Canada is cut short when the ship he’s travelling on
sinks and he’s thrown onto a lifeboat without company…except a Bengal tiger named Richard
Parker.
Cast Away (2000, 90%)
A paunchified Tom Hanks plays a FedEx manager who gets stranded in the middle of the ocean,
requiring the actor to slim down to a beach bod in real life…so much, that director Bob
Zemeckis and crew filmed What Lies Beneath in the downtime.
Captain Phillips
(2013, 93%)
Seriously, Tom…stay out of the water.
Titanic (1997, 88%)
Some of the richest citizens of the world are on the RMS Titanic …but no amount of
wealth can appease an iceberg god hellbent on tearing the ship asunder!
The Shallows (2016, 78%)
Blake Lively is stranded on a rock, has a nasty bite wound on her leg, needs to swim through
jellyfish, decide whether she wants to be a doctor or not with a shark circling nearby…while
the shore is just 180 meters away.
Deep Rising (1998, 31%)
High seas crooks and thieves assault a luxury liner in the South China Sea for the biggest
payday ever…but something has already gotten to the ship first, leaving passenger guts and
gristle all over.
The Finest Hours
(2016, 64%)
The SS Pendleton has just been split in twain by a cyclone…now it’s up to the Coast
Guard to save its crew in their most dangerous rescue operation.
A Hijacking (2013, 95%)
A tense, gripping thriller, A Hijacking avoids action movie cliches and instead
creates a palpable sense of dread by mixing gritty realism with atmospheric beauty…in Danish.
All Is Lost (2013,
94%)
It’s going to take more than some ocean bobs to take down Redford, Bob…so how about a full-on
tropical storm instead?
Dead Calm (1989, 82%)
Whenever Billy Zane climbs aboard your boat, keep your friends close…and your flare gun even
closer.
Ghost Ship (2002, 14%)
It’s 1962 and the passengers on the SS Antonia Graza are enjoying an after-dinner
dance when an errant wire cuts across the floor and slices everyone in half…except for a
little girl, now fated to haunt the ship after dying alone at sea.
Moby Dick (1956,
85%)
Captain Ahab leads the Pequod and his crew on an obsessive search for an elusive
whale…and possibly to their doom.
In the Heart of the
Sea (2015, 42%)
The true story of the maritime expedition that inspired Moby Dick …who will survive
and what will be left of them?
The Mercy (2017, 74%)
The true story of Donald Crowhurst who, in 1969, entered the Sunday Times’ race around the
world on a yacht…and was never seen again.
Lifeboat (1944, 91%)
Having mastered horror, wrong man chases, and suspense thrillers, what’s a filmmaker like
Alfred Hitchcock to do…except make a single-location chamber film of nine people stuck on a
dinghy in the ocean during World War II?
The Poseidon
Adventure (1972, 79%)
An earthquake creates a tsunami that wipes out everything in its path, meaning nothing since
it’s out in the middle of the ocean…save for one ocean liner on its last trip before
retirement!
Poseidon (2006, 33%)
Just like the first Poseidon …but worse .
Speed 2: Cruise
Control (1997, 3%)
Sandra Bullock decides to take a vacation…without Keanu. She gets her lowest Tomatometer-
scoring movie in return.
White Squall (1996, 60%)
On May 2, 1961, the Albatross sank…White Squall attempts to reveal what
happened that day of fateful consequences.
The Guardian (2006,
37%)
Kevin Costner…and Ashton Kutcher. How can you resist?
Waterworld (1995, 42%)
In a world…covered in water…only one man can Kevin at any Costner.