REVIEW: Sophie Turner Sheds a Light on Mental Illness in “Survive”
After eight seasons playing Sansa Stark on Game of Thrones, Sophie Turner is returning to the entertainment world with a new movie. One of the first movie’s to be released by the newly launched mobile streaming platform, Quibi, Survive follows Jane (Turner), a young women who is on her way home when her plane goes down on a remote mountain. It is now up to Jane and the other lone survivor, Paul (Corey Hawkins) to find a way to survive while also dealing with their personal traumas.
Survive focuses not only on someone’s ability to physically survive, but it also focuses on someone’s ability to mentally survive. Jane is coming out of her rehab facility, Life House with every intention of never making it home. She has led the facility to believe that she has fully recovered from her suicide attempt, but in reality her demons are far worse than they have ever been. We watch as Jane carefully plans out her death, but her initial plans of never making it home takes a turn when her plane crashes on a remote mountain. Now, Jane and Paul, the other lone survivor, must find a way to survive. But their own differences and demons may prove to be too much to handle and could be the reason neither make it out alive.
Sophie Turner does a wonderful job bringing to life the broken Jane. Turner easily navigates from calm and control to anxious and out of control perfectly displaying Jane’s mental and physical battle throughout the movie. This is not an easy role to portray, but she clearly has done her research to make her portrayal convincing and impactful. Alongside Turner is Corey Hawkins, who also has a challenge in front of him playing the only other lead in the movie, Paul. Paul is the optimistic of the duo and you can’t help but be charmed by Hawkins portrayal. Though, it is the scenes where the two characters are verbally sparring with one another that really showcase their acting abilities.
Survive is cut into 10 minute max chapters, which means there is no time for filler chapters. Each episode nicely builds on top of the other one and each episode is filled with a lot of content. This will definitely be a show you binge watch in one sitting with how intriguing it is and how great Turner and Hawkins are in it. Fair warning though, this movie sheds a light on anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts and troubling circumstances, so you have been warned.
Grade: A