Sightlines · a viewing thread

Into the Heart of Darkness

A run of grueling journeys into hostile country — jungle, ice, desert, occupied forest — where the ordeal strips men down to something primal, hallucinatory, and often unrecoverable.

A mix of muscular crowd favorites (Predator, The Thing, Fury Road) and film-school heavyweights and devastating art-horror; several are brutal or nightmarish, so save these for when you want cinema to put you through something rather than comfort you.

  • Apocalypse Now (1979)
  • Sorcerer (1977)
  • Come and See (1985)
  • Deliverance (1972)
  • Predator (1987)
  • The Thing (1982)
  • Jacob's Ladder (1990)
  • Mandy (2018)
  • Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
  • The Wages of Fear (1953) — The under-seen 1953 original that Sorcerer is a remake of — four desperate men hauling nitroglycerin over jungle roads, the ur-text of this whole thread's white-knuckle dread, if you never got to it, pull it down now.
  • Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) — If Apocalypse Now's river madness stayed with you, this is the Herzog it descends from — a conquistador raft rotting into hallucinatory megalomania down the Amazon, and the one on your list to finally play.
  • Mad Max 2 (1981) — The lean, sun-blasted Road Warrior that Fury Road is a symphonic remake of — the overlooked original ordeal to pull down if the newer one left you wanting more.
  • Apocalypto (2006) — The forgotten Gibson chase-film that rhymes with Predator's jungle hunt — a Maya villager run barefoot through hostile forest for his life, brutal and relentless, worth finally admitting from your list.
  • Touching the Void (2003) — The harrowing survival doc-drama that belongs beside The Thing's ice — a climber crawling off a shattered leg down a Peruvian mountain, stripped to pure animal will, the one you kept meaning to watch.
  • Jeremiah Johnson (1972) — The quiet wilderness cousin to Deliverance — a man walking into the Rockies to be unmade and remade by them, the elegiac deep-cut of this thread to finally pull down.
  • Wake in Fright (1971) — The outback nightmare to finally pull down if these gutted you — a schoolteacher's weekend dissolving into primal, hallucinatory savagery you don't come back from, the lost Australian classic on your list.