Parents' Guide to

Society of the Snow

By Jennifer Green, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 15+

Snowy survival tale has violence, emotional intensity.

Movie R 2023 144 minutes
Society of the Snow movie poster: Survivors try to get rescued

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Community Reviews

age 14+

Based on 2 parent reviews

age 15+

Incredible attention to detail with a lot of philosophical musings

The similarities to Alive (1993) are difficult to shake, but there are some key differences. The film is clearly told as an amalgamation of perspectives from the survivors. There is an incredible attention to detail, an omnipresent silence that permeates the film and a whole lot of philosophical musings. The pacing of the film is a bit clunky and self-absorbed, which is curious since this is clearly a story about surviving as a community. The emphasis of the survivor's ingenuity and consequently of the human spirit is in every frame. Bayona is skilled in centering all of the members of the fateful flight. I do not know if there could be too much deference, but perhaps Bayona played with that possibility a bit.
age 13+

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (2 ):
Kids say (1 ):

This true events-based film's impressive production values compensate for a two-and-a-half-hour ordeal of disaster, death, and survival. Society of the Snow focuses on the realistic horrors of what the passengers aboard a crashed Uruguayan jet suffered to survive for months in the remote Andes mountains, including cannibalism. Though director J.A. Bayona and co-scripters Nicolás Casariego and Jaime Marques weave in themes questioning the meaning of life and death in the face of meaningless tragedy, the movie centers on the calamities more than the characters.

The script offers a limited backstory and development of the individuals' lives and personalities. We care about their survival because they are the ultimate underdogs, and fewer and fewer keep making it through the unthinkable. We watch them struggle against every possible odd and want there to be purpose to their suffering. Bayona throws disturbing images at us—starting with the realism of the crashing bodies when the plane goes down, and ending with a stripped-down view of their battered physiques and psyches. He relies on effects, including an impressive sound design and intermittent extreme wide shots and close-ups, to convey the psychological and physical trauma of these men. The feat is sure to win the team technical recognition, but it won't be for all audiences.

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