There’s nothing quite like seeing one of the world’s most recognisable movie stars as a kid to make you feel old.
That’s just the privilege waiting for you if you catch The Impossible on Netflix before it leaves the streaming service on 1 June – which doesn’t leave you much time at all.
It’s a movie adaptation of the true story of a British family trying to survive the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean, which caused absolute devastation on the nearby coastline of Thailand, Indonesia and more.
Tom Holland plays the family’s oldest child, Lucas, who becomes stranded with his mother (Naomi Watts), while his father (Ewan McGregor) does his best to keep the other two children safe – and it’s a fairly harrowing watch at times.
The movie was particularly singled out for praise upon release for the long, stressful sequence that portrays the tsunami itself, which comes out of nearly nowhere and lasts for a good chunk of its runtime to really give you a sense of how difficult it would have been to survive.
That praise has translated through to a really respectable Rotten Tomatoes score of 82% from critics – and audiences seem to agree, rating it at a slightly boosted 84%. That all adds up to a pretty guaranteed memorable watch.
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Director J.A. Bayona also went on to do interesting things, with both of his follow-up movies A Monster Calls and Society of the Snow getting really interesting reviews from critics upon release.
We can’t necessarily say that The Impossible will be a fun watch, per se, because it’s a pretty intense movie that really doesn’t shy away from how devastating the natural disaster was, but it’s well worth checking it out while Netflix can still offer it up.
It also means that, even if Disney+ is still the best streaming service for fans of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, you can look to Netflix for at least this part of his back catalogue.
Still, don’t forget that it’s only available until 1 June, so you don’t have long at all left to watch it.
