10 great hiking films

There’s nothing like an escape to nature. There’s an innate sense of peace and relaxation when you conjure up images of the great outdoors, despite the dangers you can face in the wild. Forests, jungles and national parks have set the scene for cinema to explore humanity’s relationship with nature, allowing for quiet contemplation and shocking revelation in equal measure. In an activity like hiking, filmmakers can strip their films back to the elements, allowing characters to reckon with themselves and those they travel with.

The success of these hiking trips varies wildly. In some, they’re life-defining adventures that characters will cherish for all time. And for others, they’ll be lucky to make it out alive. While the films on this list differ greatly in terms of scope, from small experimental indies to prestigious best-picture Oscar nominees, they’re all united by a sense of awe for the great outdoors.

The latest entry into the hiking cinema canon is the terrific Good One, coming to UK cinemas on 16 May. The directorial debut of India Donaldson finds 17-year-old Sam (Lily Collias) going on a camping trip with her father and his friend. It’s an incisive study of the divide between parent and child, full of lush forest imagery as Sam makes her way into the wilderness. Ahead of the release of Good One, here are 10 films that capture the lure of the trail.

Director: Rob Reiner

“I never had any friends later on like I had when I was 12. Jesus, does anyone?” says an older Gordie (Richard Dreyfuss). He’s referring to a fateful weekend in 1959, when young Gordie (Wil Wheaton), Chris (River Phoenix), Teddy (Corey Feldman) and Vern (Jerry O’Connell) head out on an adventure to uncover a missing child’s body. Their journey is fraught with peril, including a leech-filled swamp, deadly train tracks and nasty bullies. It’s an experience that bonds them, and moments where their lives aren’t in danger allow the boys to connect in ways they’d never expect.

A winning coming-of-age story, Stand by Me is an enormously satisfying exploration of friendship, the heightened emotions of adolescence, and those magical life-defining moments that you don’t realise are so special until long after they’ve passed. Few films have captured that profoundness of youth like Stand by Me.

Director: Gus Van Sant

Two guys named Gerry walk into the desert. That may sound like the set-up for a joke, but it’s actually the plot of this 2002 Gus Van Sant film, in which the Gerrys (Casey Affleck and Matt Damon) drive to Death Valley and start hiking. They go off path and find themselves lost in the endless desert without food, water or any sense of their location.

After back-to-back crowdpleasers in Good Will Hunting (1997) and Finding Forrester (2000), Van Sant returned to his indie roots with a truly uncompromising vision of desperation. Gerry is divisive by nature, taking influence from Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr with its hypnotic, unbroken long takes (including a close-up shot of Affleck and Damon in profile walking through the sand). There’s hardly any dialogue; stretches of silence fill a sparse soundscape as these two men grow increasingly irritable towards one another as their odds of survival decrease.

Director: Neil Marshall

Nature is hell. There is a veritable buffet of horror films that use hiking as a set-up for terror (The Ritual, Significant Other, Wrong Turn, The Blair Witch Project, to name a few), but few are as legitimately frightening as The Descent. Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) has experienced unbearable loss. To bring joy back to her life, she reunites with her closest and most adventurous friends in a cabin to set off on a hiking expedition, including some daring cave-diving.

Director Neil Marshall uses a host of tricks, including eerie overhead shots and a bevy of expertly timed jump scares, to keep heart rates at uncomfortable levels. Sam McCurdy’s cinematography employs a bold red and sinister green colour palette with menacing delight, while also conjuring a spine-chilling sense of scale, both cavernous and unbearably tight. This is not a film for claustrophobes.

Director: Kelly Reichardt

American slow-cinema master Kelly Reichardt fine-tuned her minimalistic approach with Old Joy. Executive produced by Todd Haynes and featuring a soundtrack by Yo La Tengo, Old Joy is a two-hander that follows lifelong friends Kurt (Will Oldham) and Mark (Daniel London). They’ve not seen each other in years: Mark is a former hippie who’s married with a stable job, while Kurt never left that life behind, attending meditation retreats, drifting from one friend’s couch to another. Kurt calls Mark, and the two set off on an overnight camping trip in the Cascades.

Reichardt’s film is peaceful and meditative, with the sounds of running streams and birdsong meshing with the soundtrack. Mark is a very different person from who he once was, and spending so much time with Kurt calls into question the ideals he once held so passionately and has now given up, and even whether this is a friendship worth continuing. A remarkable look at generational malaise, Old Joy is finely attuned to the joys and loneliness of nature.

Director: Sean Penn

Chris McCandless (Emile Hirsch) has everything going for him. He’s a straight-A student and a talented athlete. Possessing a solid family foundation and all one would need to thrive, you could say he’s the embodiment of the American Dream. But he can’t shake the feeling of disillusionment, that there’s something better out there. So he donates his life savings to Oxfam and sets out to live in the wild. And he doesn’t tell anyone he’s going.

Actor Sean Penn wrote and directed Into the Wild, based on the non-fiction book by Jon Krakauer. This isn’t a film interested in judging McCandless’s journey; instead it seeks to understand his fascination with the great outdoors. Into the Wild recognises the exquisite beauty of the wilderness while also highlighting the immense challenges of attempting to live within it. Penn directs an impressive supporting cast that includes Catherine Keener, Vince Vaughn, Kristen Stewart, William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden.

Director: Danny Boyle

Aron Ralston (James Franco) went on a hiking adventure typical of someone with his mountaineering skills. But the unthinkable happened while Ralston was making his way through Utah’s Canyonlands National Park, when he gets his arm trapped underneath a boulder. He spent over five days – or a staggering 127 hours – stuck and desperately hoping for rescue. Directed by Danny Boyle, 127 Hours recounts the true story of Ralston’s jaw-dropping struggle for survival.

Losing track of time, Ralston hallucinates, recalling memories with his ex-girlfriend Rana (Clémence Poésy) and family, including his younger sister Sonja (Lizzy Caplan) and father Larry (Treat Williams). The stirring score by A.R. Rahman (who collaborated with Boyle on Slumdog Millionaire) leaves a lump in your throat, and Anthony Dod Mantle and Enrique Chediak’s cinematography brings out the sumptuous oranges and staggering monumental scale of Utah’s mountains. Boyle’s 127 Hours is a remarkable ode to the testament of the human spirit and our relationship with the great outdoors.

Director: Julia Loktev

Every decision defines who we are. But some decisions carry an unimaginable weight, so that even a split-second choice can alter our trajectory for good. Nica (Hani Furstenberg) and Alex (Gael García Bernal) are utterly entranced by one another and engaged to be married. The pair travel together on a backpacking journey to Georgia to explore the Caucasus mountains. But once in the mountains, which are bursting with lush green vegetation, something happens that makes Nica and Alex see their romance in a new light.

Revealing what the incident is would ruin the excitement of Julia Loktev’s The Loneliest Planet, a coy and gripping slow-burn about a suddenly faltering relationship. The gorgeous, fertile mountains offset the growing chill in the dynamic between Nica, Alex and their guide Dato (Bidzina Gujabidze). This is a haunting film that burrows in your mind long after it’s over.

Director: Jean-Marc Vallée

Cheryl Strayed’s (Reese Witherspoon) life is on the fritz. The loss of her mother Bobbi (Laura Dern) sent Cheryl into a spiral of drug use and anonymous sex. Her marriage has failed, and she lives without a sense of direction. To reset, she embarks on a journey most wouldn’t dream of: a solo 1,100-mile hike along the Pacific Crest Trail. In Wild, Witherspoon is a revelation, eschewing her typically sweet, charming characters for the prickly Cheryl, and earning an Oscar nomination for her efforts.

Director Jean-Marc Vallée (who also worked with Witherspoon on HBO’s Big Little Lies) deftly draws tension and excitement from a largely solitary journey. Shooting on location, cinematographer Yves Bélanger adds a wondrous, dreamlike quality to the vastness of the PCT. Based on a true story, Wild is a remarkable fable about vulnerability and resistance, and the incredible lengths we’re willing to go to for a chance at something better.

Director: Debra Granik

Hiking in the forest is a daily activity for 17-year-old Tom (Thomasin McKenzie) and her father Will (Ben Foster). War veteran Will suffers from PTSD, but the father and daughter have a good life living in Oregon’s Forest Park, in isolation from the rest of the world. Living in the park is illegal, and when Will is spotted by a jogger, the pair are forced to leave their home.

Wisely, director Debra Granik doesn’t sensationalise this story, instead honing in on the bond between Will and Tom, and a world that strives to integrate them into a society they don’t want to be a part of. McKenzie is astonishing as a daughter forced to reckon with her father’s mental health, demonstrating real chemistry with Foster as her troubled dad. It’s a gorgeously shot, heartbreaking story about the effects of isolation and the ties that bind us.

Director: India Donaldson

Movies about the wilderness tend to evoke a certain level of terror, but Good One examines a different kind of horror: one of innocence lost. Sam (Lily Collias) is headed on a hiking trip with her father Chris (James LeGros) and his friend Matt (Danny McCarthy) in the New York Catskills. At 17, Sam isn’t exactly excited to join her father on a weekend away, and with Matt’s son dropping out last minute, she feels especially alienated. Tension slowly builds as a group of other hikers join Sam and company, but one fateful evening changes everything.

In Good One, the Catskills become a place of peaceful contemplation but also a vista of tremendous loneliness. Like The Loneliest Planet, Good One hinges on a split-second moment that turns the entire film on its head. India Donaldson’s first feature marks the arrival of an audacious talent, as does Lily Collias’s patient, simmering performance.