Not even true-life events are safe from the industry’s obsession with remakes and reboots, but Netflix has at least recruited a director familiar with the disaster genre – and effects-heavy epics – to tackle the infamous Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 for a third time in Society of the Snow.
Director J.A. Bayona’s previous credits include breakout horror The Orphanage, the nerve-shredding The Impossible, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and the pilot episode of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, so he’s no slouch when it comes to tension and atmosphere.
Of course, the story of what the survivors of the titular plane crash were forced to do when trapped in the rugged Andes mountains with nowhere to go is well-known across the world, never mind the fact it was previously brought to the screen in 1976’s Survive! and 1993’s Alive. Speaking to Deadline, Bayona explained what he’s bringing to the table that we haven’t already seen before.
“I saw the movie [Survive!] again while I was preparing the film, but I couldn’t find a good copy of it. I found a version on the internet that was not good. I checked it out, but I didn’t pay that much attention to it because it was a very bad copy. It’s a very different tale from our story. It was an exploitation movie made soon after the disaster. It was very different from our approach. It’s obviously the same story, but the telling is unique, since, for the first time, it tells the story of all the society. Not only the survivors, but also those who died in the Andes. It shows an untold perspective, so the meaning and the sense of the story feels very different to me.”
Netflix clearly has high hopes seeing as Society of the Snow will be premiering at the Venice Film Festival, although it arguably won’t be too difficult to deliver the best version of the story given that the other two aren’t exactly what you’d call certifiable classics.
Published: Aug 24, 2023 10:38 am