Deliverance and its novel of the same name are a dissection of themes like masculinity and humans vs. nature. It’s a story about survival and utilizing man’s strength to survive by any means necessary. With its plot about a group of friends who all fit the mold of a certain type of male stereotype on an outdoor adventure that goes wrong, a lot of movies have come out since Deliverance that work as comparable films.
Deliverance is a horror film, but a more realistic horror about man’s battle with nature and how it’s always lurking to take us out. And of course, a catchy banjo tune that goes along with it!
Southern Comfort
Released in 1981, it’s easy to say that Deliverance was utilized in the pitch for Southern Comfort. A film that stars Powers Booth, Keith Carradine, and Fred Ward, who take part in a military training exercise that takes place deep in the swamps of Louisiana. The group steals a few canoes and taunts some locals while firing blanks at them. These antics soon backfire, as the locals begin to hunt them down.
Deliverance and Southern Comfort both deal with the topic of surviving a landscape one knows nothing about. And also deals with the scary reality of some backwoods people being hot on your trail with plans to do harm to you.
Sideways
Now you’re probably wondering what the hell this film is doing on a list like this. Sideways is about two best friends, Paul Giamatti and Thomas Hayden Church, who travel to wine country in northern California. One friend is on the verge of getting married, and the other is in the fallout of his divorce. Now here is where it intersects with Deliverance.
Both films are studies of men and how they interact with one another in the world. Some men are wild and dominant alphas who can’t keep it in their pants. Others are more intellectual and methodical in nature. It’s a lot like the study of the group of men in Deliverance in some ways,
Just Before Dawn
Just Before Dawn is a full-blown slasher film that is in the vein of Deliverance. A lot of what we saw in early slasher films mixed the idea of teens out in the woods camping and being killed by backwoods rednecks. Just Before Dawn has a score that runs a chill up your spine.
It has a basic premise of a group of hikers in Oregon who ignore the warning of a park ranger (George Kennedy) and venture off into the woods, where they are stalked by a pair of inbred twins who cut up their victims with meat cleavers.
Brothers in Arms
Brothers in Arms is a straight to video late 80’s thriller about two brothers who go out on hike, but one of them has alternative motives. Things soon start to change when they get into some drama with hillbillies in the area. The two end up saving a girl from being sexually assaulted and now must survive those that hunt them and nature itself.
Despite its lacklustre budget, the film has a decent script to structure its plot in and a lot of tense uncomfortable moments that mimic Deliverance quite well.
Bridge to Nowhere
Another 1980s Deliverance knockoff that is low budget but big in survivalist drama. You could make the case for this film being the New Zealand version of Deliverance mixed in with some slasher elements of the 1980’s. This is about a group of hikers who encounter a strange man in the woods who really doesn’t want him wandering around where he lives.
The teens in the film don’t feel like they’re there to die, and there’s some great character development for an 86-minute flick. The film makes for a great chase because once these teens begin to be hunted, the intensity of the film is racketed up.
Hunters Blood
Released the same year as Bridge to Nowhere (1986), but here in America. Hunters Blood is about a group of friends who travel to Arkansas to take part in male bonding activities like hunting, fishing, and drinking. The film is quite honestly straight-up horror rather than trying to have any form of commentary on the matters at hand.
However, it’s a lot of fun as the hunters soon become the hunted by the hillbillies of the area. It also has a young Billy Bob Thornton in an early role, playing a character named… Billy Bob
Wake in Fright
Wake in Fright was released a year before Deliverance, in 1971. The film’s horror lives in its theme of surviving the rough terrain and environment of a place that isn’t familiar to its protagonist. A lot like Deliverance, Wake in Fright is about a school-teacher in the Australian outback who makes the trek to visit his girlfriend in Sydney. He gets stuck in a mining town along the way and falls in line with the gamblers and heavy drinkers of the area.
He soon finds himself going down a wormhole of booze and violence and even contemplating suicide. Wake in Fright is an incredible look at man when he is given no restrictions and the reckless individual he can become.
Bone Tomahawk
2015’s Bone Tomahawk caught a lot of traction on streaming. The film revives the western genre a bit and blends it into the world of horror. It’s about a group of lawmen and gunslingers who go on the hunt for a gang of vicious cave-dwelling cannibals who have kidnapped locals.
The film takes its time getting to the violent, grotesque third act of limbs and bodies being ripped apart. But it also touches on the rugged terrain and viciousness of life in the wild west.
Rituals
One of the biggest comparisons to Deliverance is 1977’s Rituals. A tale of man bonding amongst five doctors who go out on a camping trip and are stalked by disfigured killers. The film was Canadian-produced and released under a different name, The Creeper.
Rituals puts you on edge like Deliverance, but it also stands on its own two feet as a film about different people reacting to the same situation. The tension comes from the issues within the group and its dynamics rather than the threat of evil in the woods. It’s a brilliant double feature with Deliverance.
The Revenant
A tale of survivalist revenge that got Leonardo DiCaprio his first ever, long overdue, Oscar win. In the film, DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, a frontiersman who, when a member of his hunting team kills his son and leaves him for dead, Glass must find his way back to civilization to seek revenge.
His journey consists of life-threatening injuries, a bear attack, and sleeping inside dead horses to stay warm. All of this to get even with the man who betrayed him. Like in Deliverance, you really feel the pain of trying to survive the wilderness in The Revenant.
There we have it, our list of best movies that are similar to Deliverance. What do you think about our picks? Did one of your favourites make the list? Let us know in the comments below!