Adrift (2018)

Directed by Baltasar Kormákur. Starring Shailene Woodley, Sam Claflin, Jeffrey Thomas, Elizabeth Hawthorne. [PG-13]

A young couple, Tami (Woodley) and Richard (Claflin), agree to sail a yacht from Tahiti to California, but a hurricane flips and cripples the vessel, leaving Tami to keep the yacht afloat, search for Richard, and summon the resilience to survive long enough to be rescued. Competently-crafted survival yarn covers a lot of all-too-familiar territory; it’s one of those based-in-truth stories that’s either been reduced to clichés or verifies how real-life circumstances birthed those clichés in the first place. There’s a respectable showing from Woodley, but she only shines in her moments of dread and determination at sea, since Tami and Richard make for one of those attractive-but-banal pairings where you hope they’re enamored because you’re not. Structured as parallel courses—one starts with Tami arriving in Tahiti and meeting Richard and running up to the destructive storm, the other opens with Tami regaining consciousness on the broken boat and working to save herself and the lost Richard—toggling back and forth for ninety-something minutes. And as devastating as Hurricane Raymond was to the yacht, a “surprise reveal” gimmick toward the end is just as damaging to the integrity of the filmmakers’ trust toward the (manipulated) audience. The real Tami Oldham Ashcraft can be seen at the very end.

45/100