The three of them are truly stranded. Food is scarce, there is no medicine when Noelle starts to get sick, and danger lurks just around the fringe of the trees. Adventure and thrills do not follow them at every turn, either. They find shelter in a run-down old cabin that was used as a fox farm. In short, this is not a slick Hollywood thriller.
Some viewers are as likely to be bored by the survivors' routine as they are.
I was not. Limbo is a human thriller, a rarity in mainstream film today, in which the stakes are based not on how big the explosions get, but on the simple act of survival. Sayles pulls it off beautifully. I was intrigued by the set-up and truly engaged by the turn of events at the midway point. And the travails of the cast-aways was never less than thrilling for me, as the characters truly came to life in the way they dealt with their predicament.