Synopsis/Details
Eight contestants land in the Amazon for SURVIVE, a high-stakes survival show. Four celebrities, four survivalists, split into teams. Day one, they perform for the cameras. Day two, the crew doesn't show up. Radios are dead. The helicopter never returned from its supply run. They assume it's a stunt - a "no-contact" twist to test them.
Then Evie Castellano, the actress everyone wrote off as dead weight, finds a cameraman with his throat cut. His camera is still recording. She watches the last few seconds of footage: shapes moving through the trees at night.
She shows the rest of the group. Everyone believes her. No one knows what to do. When the tribe attacks at dusk, the game becomes real. Two contestants are taken. The survivors scatter.
Frank Kellogg, a 62-year-old retired Delta operator dismissed as "Grandpa" by the younger survivalists, leads his group to the production camp. They find a slaughterhouse. The satellite uplink is destroyed. But the fixed production cameras are still running, and the monitor tent shows footage of the tribe moving through the frame - not hunting, Frank says. Herding.
From this point forward, the film is assembled entirely from diegetic sources: the production's surveillance cameras, the contestants' GoPros, the dead crew's last recordings. The tribe is never framed deliberately. They appear in the background of shots, in the corner of frames, in reflections in water. The audience sees them before the characters do.
Frank's group reunites with what's left of the other team - only two survivors remain. Cornered at a cliff, Frank walks into the treeline alone. The camera records him going. He doesn't come back.
Evie makes a different choice. She walks into the open with empty hands. The tribe hesitates. It buys them time - but not enough.
Two months later, only Evie and one other contestant, Sully, are alive. Starving. Wounded. They've kept the cameras off to save batteries. Evie turns one on to record a goodbye. As she speaks, rotors - a rescue helicopter passes overhead. But it's searching the original base camp, not here.
They have to get back. Through the jungle. With the tribe still watching. Still herding.
When they reach the clearing, the crew has already abandoned the site and it seems as though all is lost. Until, they discover that they left behind a stocked survival kit that also includes a durable kayak to make their escape.
They summon their courage one last time in order to make it to safety upriver. In the process, Sully becomes infected and they have a mere 24 hours to make it to safety, which they barely do.
It is revealed that the footage they kept lead to the downfall of the production company in wrongful death lawsuits and restitution is paid to the families.
