The Survivor (1981)
4/10
Simple story made incomprehensible through inept handling
6 April 2016
"The Survivor" is a bizarre, incomprehensible attempt at a horror story that barely registers as that or as anything at all.

The bits that one assumes are meant to be scary are merely confusing and come out of nowhere. The soundtrack signals to you that you're supposed to be scared, pummelling you with frantic music, but this is merely irritating since you can't understand what, if anything, you are supposed to be scared by.

The plot is actually fairly simple. So why is it so confusing? It's about a pilot who survives a plane crash that kills everyone else on board. He is visited by some kind of clairvoyant or something, played by Jenny Agutter, who is about as mystical in this role as the CEO of Wendy's was when he appeared in that training video (Youtube it). Her role in the plot is obvious on paper (how else is the movie going to get the supernatural bent going?), but when handled this badly, it becomes confusing and you wonder what she is there for.

The ending, I admit, was clever. It's just that everything that led up to it was so bad that it was completely wasted, like the rest of the movie was.
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