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Adrift (2018)

★★★ — Adrift (2018)

Baltasar Kormákur, the Icelandic director who had already carved out a solid niche in survival thrillers with Everest (2015) and the earlier Icelandic hit Contraband (2012), brought this one to screens via STXfilms on a modest $35 million budget. The film is based on the true story of Tami Oldham Ashcraft, who wrote about her ordeal in the 1983 memoir Red Sky in Mourning, recounting how she and her fiancé Richard Sharp sailed into Hurricane Raymond in the Pacific and spent 41 days adrift before she reached Hawaii alone. Shailene Woodley, already established through the Divergent franchise and The Fault in Our Stars, took the lead as a more grounded, physically demanding role, doing much of her own sailing work during production. Filming took place largely on open water around Fiji.

A-Z World Movie Tour Bosnia & Herzegovina Adrift feels like sitting in on a long, quiet conversation between two people who’ve run out of small talk. It’s the cinematic equivalent of staring at a coffee cup while someone unpacks their entire life philosophy. Slow, sparse, but oddly sticky in hindsight. The film’s minimalist approach is both its strength and its snooze button. Most of the runtime is just two characters in a room, arguing, reminiscing, or just… existing. At times, I caught myself checking if my tea had gone cold, but there’s something about the rawness of it that lingers. The dialogue isn’t flashy, but it digs into the kind of existential questions that haunt you after: What does it mean to truly know someone? Can we ever escape the past? The two leads are the glue holding this ship together. No explosions, no dramatic score, just their faces carrying decades of history between them. You don’t "watch" their conflict so much as "feel" it, like a slow leak in a tire. The Director uses silence like a scalpel, carving out moments that feel painfully human. One scene, where a character meticulously folds a pile of clothes while talking about loss, hit harder than most three-act dramas. But yeah, if you’re looking for a thrill ride, this’ll test your patience. Would I recommend it? If you’ve got a rainy afternoon and a penchant for brooding, introspective stories, absolutely. It’s not a film you 'enjoy' so much as one you 'absorb'. Final verdict: A slow burn with sharp emotional embers. 3 stars for mood.

Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2018 | Watched: 2025-05-29

View on Letterboxd →

Where to watch (UK)

Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Buy: Sky Store
Physical: Amazon UK

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