'The Grey' is the special kind of survival horror that has an agenda. It's not really about non-stop action, battling monstrous wolves, and things getting killed; in fact, most of the intensity comes from simple fact that anyone could die at any moment's notice. It's about man's inability to conquer the harsh and unrelenting reality of nature. It's about the fragility of man. It's about life and death and how as human beings view them in different perspectives. In premise, it's about the conundrums that we no longer have to face anymore after humanity left the wilderness into the safety of civilisation.

'The Grey' follows the sad lives of Ottway (Liam Neeson), and a small band of oil drill workers after their plane crashes into the middle of nowhere in the blizzardous, white snow storms of isolated Alaska. After surviving the crash, and moving the bodies of their unfortunate fellow travellers, they must find a way of keeping warm, fighting starvation, and as night falls, battling a pack of mythical-like stalking wolves who lurk ever close in the shadows.

Following these sad sacks, whose bleak live's only light are mere memories of distant love ones, as they struggle and freak out as death creeps closer and closer can be an intense experience. The moments when the wolves flank and manouvre are particularly edge-of-your-seat stuff, but it doesn't compare to the sudden, unexpected strikes in the dark that rip aparts the flesh in all its gruesome detail. This feeling of dread is heightened by the beautiful yet savage, cold landscape and the ever frightening night sky. Although I was sometimes pulled out of this immersion by moments of disbelief, I was pulled back ever so strongly by the incredibly honest and revealing discussions between these survivors that not only provide comic relief but strip away the macho personas that these males use to protect themselves from each other.

These men talk about the most heart-breaking things; loved ones, reasons to live, fathers who were never there but had lasting impact on them; all the while knowingly facing death. The trails and tribulations of going through such an experience together no doubt bonded these men together, but what makes these men open up is the sheer reality that the odds are it will probably be the last time they will ever get to talk. I was moved and crushed by this film's depiction of man in the unrelenting and unfair reality of nature, where the notion of God playing a hand in this makes little sense unless he's one mean son-of-a-b**** But nature doesn't talk back. In fact, nature doesn't have to take the form of extreme temperatures, or mythical creatures, or the need for food. In our safer environments, we always must face misfortune and loss, instability and battle our own demons.

It helps that they actually shot the film in an environment that led Liam Neeson to believe that filming would not be completed. Neeson's logic followed that the actors would not be able to recall their lines, if all they could think about was how to get warm. And here's the key behind the story; man is not the master of nature, but it is nature that is the master of man, and no better argument is 'The Grey' which encapsulates this.

Quibbles lie with the repetitive and timed deaths, and the unequally interesting characters, but it's quite arbitrary when most of the lifting is done by Neeson, who, in embodying his character completely in one of the most vulnerable yet badass performances in his career, is a mystery in itself. Why is it that Ottway wanted to kill himself at the beginning of the film? What does his father's poem have to do with his perception on life? Why is he s sharpshooter hired to kill wolves? Neeson has created himself a back story to explain it. But I think we all can interpret his situation, in our own way.

There is little doubt that The Grey left me emotionally tired and yet, pondering its various messages and meanings long after the credits rolled. The action was intense, the gore was up close and personal, and the landscape was savagely beautiful making it an engaging, immersive adventure through a frozen hell. But what made it real wasn't those wolves whose eyes light up like monsters in the darkness; but these fragile men who when faced with death, must face it their own way. Death is always ignored when possible, but it can't be forever, and that's a fact of nature.

4/5