3 Movies to Watch After Everest

Thanks to streaming, no movie can ever truly fade into obscurity anymore – you just never know when a streaming platform’s audience will rediscover an old film and catapult it into becoming a modern trending hit. Case in point: the 2015 film Everest has cracked Netflix’s Top 10 rankings; the film was a solid critical and commercial success ten years ago – a dark horse hit that earned $203.4 million on a budget of $55M, mostly through strong word of mouth, as well as consumers’ fascination with both IMAX and 3D formats at that time.

Everest is now streaming on Netflix, and viewers are still resonating with the film’s harrowing story of real-life wilderness survival (or not). Audiences are also buzzing about the surprising sight of an ensemble cast that has gotten way more famous in the years since Everest was released – including Jason Clarke, Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Brolin, Robin Wright, Keira Knightley Elizabeth Debicki, Sam Worthington, Emily Watson, and John Hawkes.

With all that in mind, here are 3 great movies that offer a similar grim vibe and/or ensemble cast experience as Everest.

Society of the Snow

The 1996 Mount Everest disaster was the inspiration for Everest (2015), but it’s not the only famous survival story about a group of people stranded in the harsh terrain of a snowy mountain. Society of the Snow is Netflix’s 2023 Academy Award-nominated film about the Uruguayan rugby team that crashed in the Andes Mountains while flying on Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571.

American audiences know this story all too well from Frank Marshall’s cult-classic 1993 film Alive – and all the pop-culture parodies about how extreme lengths (cannibalism) the team went to in order to survive. However, director J.A. Bayona, a phenomenal cast, working with an international team of both Spanish and American filmmakers, all come together to deliver a thoroughly more nuanced and authentic look at this famous tale of human perseverance.

The film is streaming on Netflix.

The Grey

Want a survival thriller that’s just as gripping but doesn’t carry the weight of real-world tragedy? Then The Grey is for you. Joe Carnahan’s (The A-Team) 2011 film helped solidify Liam Neeson as a 2010s action star, while also leaning on his famed dramatic chops. The story sees Neeson as John Ottway, a lonely and depressed sharpshooter working for an Alaskan oil company as a hunter, tasked with taking out the population of wolves that are threatening the site. When John and his fellow crew rotate out of their shift and go to fly home, they end up crashing in the Alaskan wilderness and suddenly find that the tables are turned, and they are now the wolves’ prey.

The Grey isn’t just a survival tale – it’s a parable about life and death and the space we occupy in between (or “the grey” area). The slightly surreal (supernatural?) air of the film makes it less tragic, but no less thrilling – as exemplified by the iconic sequence of Neeson battling a wolf. Fans will get a kick out of seeing the cast of doomed men, which includes the likes of Frank Grillo (Peacemaker), Dermot Mulroney (Scream VI), Joe Anderson (The Crazies), Nonso Anozie (Game of Thrones), James Badge Dale (Iron Man 3), and even The Walking Dead‘s horror makeup maestro, Greg Nicotero in an acting role.

The film is available on Amazon Prime Video.

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The Impossible

Not surprisingly another J.A. Bayona film ends up on our list: The Impossible (2012). This “disaster drama” film is like Everest in that it’s based on a real-life event (the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami), and centers on an ensemble of now-famous actors, including Naomi Watts (who earned both Golden Globe and Oscars nominations for her role), Ewan McGregor (Obi-Wan), as well as Tom Holland (Marvel’s Spider-Man 4), and Samuel Joslin (the Paddington movies) at adorable younger ages. The story follows these actors as Doctor Maria Bennett (Watts), her husband Henry (McGregor), and their three sons as they are vacationing in Thailand in 2004. The family is having fun by the pool when the Indian Ocean tsunami hits, splitting the family into smaller units, who each try desperately to survive the initial tsunami wave, and then the resulting flooding and all the environmental hazards that come with it. If that wasn’t enough, both parents and children have to weigh the grim odds of ever finding one another again.

The Impossible is just as thrilling and at times brutal as the other entries on this list, but it is distinct in that it also keeps the light of hope and the power of family bonds at the forefront. Survival stories can be about more than death, darkness, and trauma, and The Impossible is some of the best proof.

The film is streaming on Peacock.