After discovering that her husband has been cheating on her, an aspiring artist takes shelter in a small town where an unhinged survival expert abducts her, forcing her to play a sadistic game in the woods to test her skills.

SYNOPSIS:

Survival is a dramatic action-packed thriller set in the primeval redwood forests of the Pacific Northwest. Intense, visceral and highly realistic, SURVIVAL explores the notions of losing oneself (physically, mentally, and even spiritually) and finding new strength and purpose through terrifying tribulation.

Survival is the story of floundering artist MICHELLE on the run from the simultaneous failures of both her marriage and career. She finds escape in a small coastal town in northern California where she hopes to find a new beginning and a simpler way of life. Before she has a chance to fully settle in however, she finds her life once again in upheaval as a flat tire leads to her forcible abduction on the way home from her new job at the local cafe.

Her kidnapper is a fatalistic wilderness survival expert known only as THE SURVIVALIST. While she is bound and gagged in his secret retreat in the deep woods, the Survivalist explains his plan to reduce the world to a Darwinistic survival-of-the-fittest scenario where only the strong -and smart- have any hope of making it through. Before she can be fully indoctrinated into his cultish plan, Michelle manages a frantic escape, injuring the Survivalist in the process.

Armed only with a worn copy of a survival manual and the few other items she has managed to make off with during her escape, Michelle must rely on her wits, her faith, and her ingenuity to evade the wounded and enraged Survivalist. Through a series of tasks that test her mettle and stretch her will to live, she struggles to find her way back to civilization while evading the Survivalist’s manic pursuit. The days wear on into weeks and she slowly succumbs to hunger, fatigue, and a series of increasingly surreal dreams that begin to break her fragile sense of reality. Meanwhile, the Survivalist follows on, slowly coming to appreciate the girl whom he has begun to think of as his finest “pupil”.

Survival is a sometimes horrific, sometimes beautiful, look at the struggle to survive. It is a captivating thriller that challenges the notions of what it means to be a human animal in a modern world. It is the inspiring story of one woman’s journey from victim running from the world to victor charging it head on.