Bayona's previous movie, the 2007 horror film The Orphanage, was a beautifully sustained exercise in atmosphere and tension and he brings some of the same skill to The Impossible, particularly in the tsunami sequence. Always an actress willing and able to put herself in harm's way, Watts endures what must have been one of her most physically demanding roles to date, fighting to keep her head above the brackish water and a firm grasp on her son. This sequence is so well-executed by the cast and crew, nothing else in the movie really comes close to matching it in terms of intensity. In fact, in the hospital scenes that follow, Bayona often tries too hard to goose the tension by having characters unexpectedly vanish or just miss running into each other.

At least the Maria and Lucas material is more compelling than Henry's storyline, which basically involves him abandoning his other two children and wandering around until happenstance brings him to the right hospital. (Well, to be fair, he puts the youngest boys on a truck that's supposedly headed for a rescue stations and asks the other adult survivors to look out for them. Not exactly the kind of choice that wins you any Father of the Year awards, but hey -- the poor guy's grief probably outweighed his judgment in the moment.) It's been so long since I've genuinely impressed by McGregor in a movie and his focused, but lackluster performance here isn't exactly a return to form. It's almost a shame that Bayona and screenwriter Sergio G. Sanchez didn't figure out a way to tell the story exclusively from the perspective of Maria and Lucas, as that's where the real drama of the movie lies.

But the biggest elephant in the room in regards to The Impossible is what can perhaps best be described as its "First World Problem," where the Thai natives are largely reduced to being bystanders in their own national tragedy in favor of white, European stars. (It's worth nothing as well that the actual family these characters are based on hail from Spain, not England.) It's safe to say that this decision is owed primarily to economic rather than artistic factors; in order to secure the substantial funds to make this movie -- not to mention attracting the attention of major distributors -- Bayona likely knew that he'd have to cast globally recognized (and English-speaking) movie stars.

It's not as if he's at all malicious in his depiction of the local Thai population, whose suffering and individual acts of heroism are recognized in small ways. Still, there's something unavoidably off-putting about seeing them pushed to the margins while the more glamorous tourists take center stage. (Left largely unmentioned in the film's climax, probably because there's no good way of bringing it up, is that this family gets to go back to their still-standing home in England if they survive their ordeal. Most of the local survivors aren't that fortunate.) While it may seem unfair to downgrade The Impossible for a creative problem with no readily apparent solution -- the only possible scenario would have been for Bayona to pull an Angelina Jolie, who used her considerable influence to direct a feature about the Bosnian War starring actual Bosnian actor (of course, his name carries far less currency than hers in the international movie marketplace) -- the fact remains that watching this movie is uncomfortable for reasons beyond its subject matter.

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