Review | Netflix movie review: Society of the Snow – riveting account of 1972 Andes plane crash survivors’ descent into cannibalism

A real-life survival story that has been told before, notably in 1993’s Alive, this retelling by J.A. Bayona on Netflix delivers both thrills and profundity

Based on interviews with 16 of the passengers, mainly young rugby players, who survived 72 days in the mountains, the film doesn’t duck the event’s gruesomeness

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Enzo Vogrincic as Numa in a still from “Society of the Snow” on Netflix, directed by J.A. Bayona, which tells the story of the passengers of a crashed plane who survived 72 days in the Andes mountains in 1972 by eating the corpses of those who died. Photo: Quim Vives/Netflix

Published: 6:45pm, 14 Dec 2023Updated: 7:55am, 15 Dec 2023

4/5 stars

The Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 disaster of 1972, in which a chartered plane travelling from the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo, to Santiago, Chile crashed in the Andes mountains, will always be remembered for one gruesome fact.

The survivors – most of them young rugby players from the Old Christians Club travelling to a match – survived for 72 days awaiting rescue by eating the corpses of their fellow passengers.

The subject of numerous books and films, most memorably the 1993 American drama Alive, starring Ethan Hawke and narrated by John Malkovich, this complex and morally challenging tale of courage and perseverance in the face of unspeakable adversity is revisited once again in the Spanish-language drama Society of the Snow.

The film, directed by J.A. Bayona (The Impossible), premiered as the closing film at the 2023 Venice Film Festival and is Spain’s official submission for the Academy Award for best international feature.

Based on interviews with the 16 survivors conducted by journalist Pablo Verci for his 2009 book of the same name, Society of the Snow plays both as a thrilling survival adventure and a deeply profound meditation on the value of human life.