the impossible movie review

A natural disaster, a sea of emotion

Tom Holland and Naomi Watts in "The Impossible."

The tsunami that devastated the Pacific Basin in the winter of 2004 remains one of the worst natural disasters in history. Although I assumed its climax, as shown in Clint Eastwood ’s film “ Hereafter ” (2010), would never be surpassed, that was before I had seen “The Impossible.” Here is a searing film of human tragedy.

We were London in 2004 when the disaster struck, and later we sat mesmerized in Biarritz, watching the news on television. Again and again, the towering wall of water rose from the sea, tossing trucks, buses and its helpless victims aside. Surely this was a blow from hell.

The victims in Eastwood’s film beheld it afar on home video. In director Juan Antonio Bayona ’s “The Impossible,” they seem lost in it, engulfed by it, damned by it.

As “The Impossible” begins, all is quiet at a peaceful resort beach in Thailand. Seconds later, victims are swept up like matchsticks. The film is dominated by human figures: a young British couple, Maria and Henry Bennett ( Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor ), and their three young sons, Lucas, Simon and Thomas ( Tom Holland , Oaklee Pendergast and Samuel Joslin). All five fear they will never see their loved ones again.

In the earlier Eastwood film, they seem the victims of cruel destiny singling out a fate, perhaps foretold. In the Bayona film, have they been doomed by destiny? Seated in a dark theater, I reached out my hand for that of my wife’s. She and I had visited the same beach and discussed visiting it with our children and grandchildren. An icy finger ran slowly down our spines.

Such a connection can be terrifying. What does it mean? We are the playthings of the gods. As the film’s heroine, Naomi Watts powerfully becomes a front-runner for an Academy Award. Its eldest young hero, Lucas (Holland), separated from all, seeks tirelessly for fellow family members. How did anyone possibly survive? It takes a lot of courage for the little boy to bravely try to help others.

Spoilers follow, although the trailer and TV commercials reveal many of them. I’m happy I was blindsided by the story. We meet the Bennetts aboard a flight beginning their family holiday in Khao Lak, Thailand. We almost feel, rather than hear, a deeply alarming shift in the atmosphere. Something is fundamentally wrong. We see the tsunami from the tourists’ point of view. There is a shift in the universe, leaving behind a dazed group whose world is a jumble of destruction. They wander through the wreckage.

Maria is terrifyingly knocked through a glass wall and realizes she can see her son Lucas’ tiny head and body struggling to stay afloat in the surging flood waters. With indomitable strength and courage, she clings to debris, and they find themselves in a makeshift hospital that seems to have been somehow cobbled together. We realize she is the most seriously injured and begins to drift into and out of consciousness. She is a medical doctor and applies emergency first aid to herself.

Henry, tough and plucky, screams out the names of his two younger sons and loads them onto a truck bound for higher ground. The geographical layout miraculously seems halfway familiar to us after dozens of hours of cable news. All of those YouTube videos uploaded by strangers have been populated by characters we think of as people we know.

The film’s most dramatic sequences focus on Lucas, assigning himself the role of his mother’s lifeguard and protector. Now again, at another holiday season, this film becomes a powerful story of a family’s cohesive strength.

Director Juan Antonio Bayona and writer Sergio G. Sanchez combine visual effects in this film that are doubly effective because they strive to do their job without calling undue attention. It is a mark of great acting in a film when it succeeds in accomplishing what it must precisely when it is required. “The Impossible” is one of the best films of the year.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

The Impossible

• Naomi Watts as Maria
• Ewan McGregor as Henry
• Tom Holland as Lucas
• Geraldine Chaplin as Old woman
• Oaklee Pendergast as Simon

Directed by

• Juan Antonio Bayona
• Sergio G. Sanchez

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Movie Review

Swept Away and Torn Apart in a Sea of Despair

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By A.O. Scott

• Dec. 20, 2012

The Asian tsunami of Dec. 26, 2004, killed almost a quarter-million people in 14 countries. The scale and speed of the devastation defy comprehension, and no movie could be expected to convey the full measure of the horror. But disaster, real and imagined, is a staple of the modern cinematic imagination, and an event like the tsunami presents itself to an ambitious filmmaker as both a technical challenge and a moral risk.

“The Impossible,” the second feature from the Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona, uses digital imagery, meticulous sound design and tried-and-true editing techniques to recreate both the violence of unleashed waters and the desolation that followed their assault on southern Thailand. Much more than Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter,” which used the tsunami as a framing device for one of its tales of supernatural obsession, “The Impossible” plunges the audience into the catastrophe and then immerses us in the panic, grief and disorientation of the aftermath.

Mr. Bayona’s first film, “The Orphanage,” was a horror movie, a ghost story whose unusual emotional intensity was grounded in the anxious, desperate bond between mother and child. “The Impossible” is also, in its way, a horror film, with nature as the malevolent force threatening innocent lives. The dramatic emphasis is on the anguish of a mother and her son, who survive the waves and are separated from the rest of their family.

As the movie opens, Maria (Naomi Watts) and Henry (Ewan McGregor), an English couple living in Japan, are flying to Thailand with their three sons for a Christmas vacation at a luxurious beach resort. (The real people whose experiences inform “The Impossible” were a Spanish family of five on a similar trip.) They are troubled by the usual stresses — Henry worries about his job; Maria, a doctor who stopped practicing when they moved to Japan, wonders if she should go back to work; the boys bicker and whine — but they seem to be very nice people having a very good time.

Mr. Bayona and the screenwriter, Sergio G. Sánchez, do not spend much time filling in nuances of character. That job is left to the actors, who rise brilliantly to the task of showing the reactions of ordinary people to extreme circumstances. Maria is washed inland along with her oldest son, Lucas (Tom Holland), and is badly injured by the time they reach relatively dry land. Her fear, exhaustion and ferocious maternal determination dominate the first half of the movie, and Ms. Watts moves through these emotional states with instinctive grace and an intensity that is never showy. Mr. Holland, meanwhile, matures before our eyes, navigating the passage from adolescent self-absorption to profound and terrible responsibility. He is a terrific young actor.

And Mr. McGregor, his antic youthful energy tamed but not entirely suppressed, is a very persuasive and touching dad in distress. It is not giving much away to disclose that Henry and the two younger boys, Thomas (Samuel Joslin) and Simon (Oaklee Pendergast) also survive; Mr. Bayona is a nimble manipulator of audience feelings, but not a sadist. And his emphasis is less on the possibility of death than on the logistics of staying alive and searching for information and help. The sometimes excruciating suspense of “The Impossible” comes from the efforts of the parents and children to find one another despite geographic displacement, a shattered communication system and a chaotic relief effort.

Survivors are also witnesses, and “The Impossible” shows us, through the eyes of one unbelievably lucky family, some terrible things, including mangled bodies and parents in despair. But as Maria and Henry’s ordeal unfolds, the film’s focus starts to feel distressingly narrow. Virtually everyone shown suffering after the tsunami is a European, Australian or American tourist, and the fact that the vast majority of the dead, injured and displaced were Asian never really registers. At one point Maria and Lucas are cared for by residents of a small village and later they are helped by Thai doctors, but these acts of selfless generosity are treated like services to which wealthy Western travelers are entitled. And the terrible effects of the tsunami on the local population are barely acknowledged.

This is not to dismiss the real anguish of people like the family on whose miraculous survival Mr. Bayona’s movie is based, nor to scold the director for making this movie instead of another. But there is a troubling complacency and a lack of compassion in “The Impossible,” which is less an examination of mass destruction than the tale of a spoiled holiday. You could also say that it is a movie about the consequences of global inequality, but unfortunately only by accident.

“The Impossible” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Death and destruction, tactfully handled.

Watch A. O. Scott on “The Sweet Spot” with David Carr, on culture and criticism, at nytimes.com.

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The Impossible Reviews

... A moving, shocking, and visceral film. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10 | Jan 2, 2024

This isn't a narrative of a larger-than-life hero swooping in to save the day; rather, it's a testament to the combined efforts of ordinary individuals, bound by humanity, who become heroes in the crucible of disaster.

Full Review | Dec 11, 2023

What one single movie can do is give at least one true story profound respect and realism. Most importantly, what the beauty of any movie can do is remind us all of the hope and survival that rises from the depths of tragedy and loss.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 4, 2023

With the help of Maria Belon herself, Sergio G Sanchez's taut and tear-stained script never overplays its hand when it comes to sentimentality and cleverly keeps the audience in the dark (sometimes literally) for as long as possible...

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 18, 2023

A punishing experience, with hardly a moment after the first twenty minutes where a lump isn’t in your throat or tears welling up in your eyes.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 20, 2022

It tells an intensely affecting story and allows our senses to take it all in and react in our own way.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 22, 2022

It starts not with clever attempts at drawing emotions from the audience, but rather with blunt, staggering visuals to demand pity and sympathy.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Dec 1, 2020

In most years, Naomi Watts would be a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination with a performance that is absolutely mesmerizing and emotionally devastating.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 11, 2020

'The Impossible' is a magnificent survival drama. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 25, 2020

Dramatic and unwavering, The Impossible will make you believe that anything is possible.

Full Review | Nov 27, 2019

The purpose of Bayona's film is "dubious."

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Nov 19, 2019

Sometimes it's sentimental to a fault, but the thrilling and innovative filmmaking that's being done makes it all worth it.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Aug 7, 2019

The Impossible may be schmaltz, but it's damn good schmaltz. It's the kind of story that is so incredible, so impossible, that it can only be true.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 6, 2019

[The Impossible] shows us devastation, yes, unbelievable havoc, yes, horrific human loss, yes. But also, exemplary courage and love and compassion, all done with freshness and feeling.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 21, 2019

The wrath of nature is re-created so masterfully by filmmaker Juan Antonio Bayona that it feels like a documentary.

Full Review | Jan 26, 2019

It might seem a noble project, aiming to show the rest of the world what hell some endured. But even a dramatic film can only suggest part of the experience. And I fear The Impossible might serve only to trivialize that experience.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 18, 2018

Compelling and oozing with conflict and complexity, The Impossible is a heartfelt horror show worth its weight in reflective, ghoulish gold.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 18, 2018

It's all superbly acted, with Watts especially delivering a powerful performance.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 13, 2018

Bayona's staging of the tsunami without (seemingly without) digital effects is relentless, convincing, terrifying, non-stupid, and without Hollywood wonder.

Full Review | Apr 30, 2018

... Watts manages to transmit all the pain she suffers and what goes through the head of the protagonist... [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jan 23, 2018

Don't Miss

Movie review: ‘The Impossible’ has the right touch with real horror

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So terrifying is the 2004 tsunami as imagined in “The Impossible,” its destructive force engulfing the screen with such violent menace, that the imagery alone elicits a rising dread so intense you may feel yourself gasping for breath.

Spanish-born director J.A. Bayona must have been tempted to let the monstrous waves triggered by the Indian Ocean earthquake that devastated South East Asia and left hundreds of thousands dead overwhelm the dramatic story he tells.

That never happens in this profoundly moving film inspired by the real-life experience of the Alvarez Belon family on that fateful December day. Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor star as Maria and Henry, on holiday with their three boys at a Thailand beach resort, and the film introduces gifted young Tom Holland as the couple’s oldest son Lucas.

Best of 2012: Movies | TV | Pop music | Jazz

Bayona achieves a rare sense of balance between the big and the powerful as well as the small and the intimate in the family’s survival against impossible odds, no doubt the inspiration for the title. Their situation was heartbreaking, their courage in the face of it humbling. It is the kind of ode to the human spirit that you hope comes along, and not just during the holiday season.

One surprise is that it took a horror auteur to pull off such a grounded film without letting the tsunami, or the sentiment, get out of control, although he had an abundance of both in Sergio G. Sanchez’s screenplay. You could argue that “The Impossible” could have benefited from more nuance in the dialogue, but that flaw only slightly dims the power of the film.

As the movie opens, Maria and Henry are on a turbulent flight with their boys, Lucas, Thomas (Samuel Joslin) and Simon (Oaklee Pendergast). A smooth landing and 24 hours later, the Christmas presents dispensed and wrapping paper crumpled on the floor, they head to the pool. Bayona uses that brief calm before the tsunami to do more than introduce us to the people whose journey we will follow.

In a handful of scenes, the director lays the framework for the way in which he will use sight and sound to define their experience. The deafening roar of the jet engines, the glassy ocean underneath it, the eerie silence that thickens in the moments before the tsunami hits, and the muffled screams of Maria when it does, are beyond even what Bayona achieved in his petrifying Cannes Film Festival debut a few years ago. “The Orphanage,” also written by Sanchez, was a far more traditional genre film, though the director’s understanding of the fear that comes with the loss of control — those moments when forces beyond you take over your fate — very much infiltrated that film too.

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For his second feature film, Bayona has significantly refined the sensory sensibilities, working once again with cinematographer Oscar Faura, whose impressive background includes other unsparing examinations of the human condition, notably 2010’s “Biutiful,” with Javier Bardem, and 2004’s “The Machinist,” with Christian Bale. You believe it when the filmmakers say the eight or so minutes of the tidal wave that we see on screen was a year in preparation and a month in shooting the special and visual effects veterans Felix Berges and Pau Costa created.

Like the experience of the family separated by the tsunami, the narrative is split between Maria and Lucas’ journey and Henry’s with the two younger boys, though the mother and son arc dominates. In the panic that overtakes Maria when she surfaces to a vast churn of water and debris, alone, no sight of her family or anyone else, the odds of survival are laid out. When she spots Lucas struggling in the current, the clash between incredible hope and absolute fear surfaces. Both those emotions carry the film.

Soon it becomes clear that coming out alive is no guarantee of survival. Maria’s injuries are grave and in that moment when Lucas sees a gaping wound and whispers “Mama,” the boy becomes a man. The many ways in which Lucas is forced to grow up in just a matter of days, and Maria’s instinctive understanding that to come out of this intact she must find a way to guide her son’s choices even as she lies near death, is the real heart of the movie. Holland and Watts’ onscreen bond is one of the most poignant aspects of the film.

As is always the case in disasters like these, the road to help is paved by the care and generosity of strangers, and the movie is filled with the many small acts of kindness extended to the family along the way. The villagers who rip off a door to carry Maria, the man who lends Henry his cell phone despite the precious minutes of battery life he will lose.

Henry spends the hours after the tsunami walking through the devastation screaming Maria and Lucas’ names, McGregor channeling such grief in every labored step. Soon he is forced to trust his 5- and 7-year-old boys to others so they can go to the safety of the hills as his search for the rest of the family continues.

Miles away in an over-crowded hospital, Maria faces multiple surgeries in the crudest of circumstances. The scope of the damage and the difficult realities are woven in. Pick-up trucks carrying bodies, the makeshift message boards with names of the missing, aid workers trying to keep up with the unending string of injuries, the parentless children, the childless parents, random family photos covered in mud, final notes left behind, houses reduced to matchstick heaps, and the growing field of bodies in bags become the backdrop. It was a fine line to walk to show the extent of the disaster and its human cost without making the moments feel like exploitation. The filmmakers have handled it with a sensitivity that is respectful of the loss.

Though many people will know the ending before they walk into the theater, that doesn’t make “The Impossible” any less affecting. For it is in the details — the many ways in which fate and circumstance intervened, and what survival required of each member of the Alvarez Belon family — that you find the far better story.

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User reviews

The Impossible

What a punch in the gut.

• Dec 6, 2019

Not for the faint of heart

• julian-mumford
• Apr 9, 2013

A terrible event ... but a moving film

• Sep 11, 2012

Naomi Watts superior performance

• SnoopyStyle
• Aug 15, 2013

Harrowing, emotional portrayal of a devastating event

• parallel_projection
• Jan 5, 2013

Tearjerking; The Impossible

• Feb 10, 2013

A Must See Movie

• Nov 26, 2012

Realistic, bleak, but ultimately life-affirming.

• CelluloidRamblings
• Jan 4, 2013

Watts and Holland own it...One of the Best Pictures of the Year!

• ClaytonDavis
• Sep 27, 2012

emotional roller-coaster - but average script

• andrewtilling-586-256157
• Feb 6, 2013

Brutal at times despite its problems (SPOILERS)

• bob the moo
• Mar 9, 2013

Emotional and Epic

• malaysian1789

Sentimental glop -

• Jan 10, 2013

Strong Emotional Journey

• Sep 10, 2012

While Trying to Recreate the Horror of 2004, Bayona Manages to Do 'The Impossible'!

• Apr 20, 2016

Good But not Great

• Mar 13, 2021

Spectacular as well dramatic story based on facts and masterfully directed by Juan Antonio Bayona

• Nov 24, 2013

Black Hawk Down

• Dec 29, 2012

Could Have Been Told A Lot Better

• Theo Robertson
• Jun 19, 2013

An uplifting movie with great performances

• estebangonzalez10
• Jan 13, 2013

Lots of Suspense, Not a Complete Success

• Feb 2, 2013

Not perfect, but effective

• Nov 24, 2020

An average movie with one great ten minute sequence

• MediaboyMusings
• Oct 5, 2012

A true story that begins with a lie

• Jan 3, 2013
• bennyboy_360

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