The Survivor (1981)—or, as it could more accurately be called, Planes, Pyrotechnics, and Poor Plotting: The Movie. If Possession is a fever dream that makes sense in its own psychotic way, The Survivor is like someone decided to retell a James Herbert novel using cardboard cutouts, a hangover, and a fog machine.
Robert Powell plays David Keller, the airline pilot who somehow survives a plane crash that kills 300 passengers. Naturally, this is immediately less “heroic ordeal” and more “oh, look, we’ve got a protagonist who is simultaneously cursed with immortality and a terrible haircut.” Jenny Agutter, as the clairvoyant Hobbs, wanders around, performing what can only be described as “psychic interpretive dance,” presumably to convey the anguish of the deceased, though mostly she looks like she’s trying to remember if she left the oven on.
The plot itself has all the coherence of a drunk seagull. Planes explode. People appear and disappear like rejected Snapchat filters. Someone gets killed by a paper cutter (yes, a paper cutter, because apparently a Boeing 747 isn’t gruesome enough). And in the grand finale, everyone burns spectacularly in an airplane hangar—because why not? Nothing says “Australian horror” like charred corpses seated in a cockpit, looking eternally uncomfortable.
Joseph Cotten, in his final film appearance, plays a priest who gives a sermon. Unfortunately, it’s hard to feel much gravitas when the rest of the movie feels like a haunted travelogue, complete with inexplicable visions and poorly timed screams. You almost wish the movie had leaned fully into absurdity instead of trying, and failing, to be a tense supernatural thriller.
The editing and pacing are sporadic at best; scenes drag like lost luggage through Adelaide, while moments that should terrify—like ghostly burn-scarred apparitions—register more as “mildly inconvenienced” than terrifying. And the special effects? Let’s just say the film makes cardboard look more convincing than actual disaster footage.
By the end, the moral is clear: surviving a plane crash in this movie is less about skill or luck and more about having the patience to endure what feels like 90 minutes of someone else’s bad fever dream. Burnt corpses, psychic visions, inexplicable deaths by office equipment, and an underwhelming finale that could have been solved by a single phone call—The Survivor is proof that horror films can fail upwards, because at least you’ll laugh at how badly it tries.
In short, this movie is less “supernatural horror” and more “let’s watch some people wander around confusedly until they catch fire.” If you want a truly haunting cinematic experience, stick with Possession—if you want a movie that haunts your sense of logic, The Survivor is a mandatory trip.
