The Great Outdoors?! 10 Movies That Make Us Fear Nature

Image via Complex Original

Hippies are dead wrong: The "great outdoors" is not great. From what we've seen in movies, tucked away in the safety and comfort of our homes, nature is a sonovabitch and no place to enjoy leisure activities. The latest film to convince us never to cross the threshold is Danny Boyle's 127 Hours, the true story of mountain climber Aron Ralston (played by James Franco), who got his arm wedged between a rock and a hard place while canyoneering in Robbers Roost, Utah in May 2003 and had to choose between losing life or limb. Did thoughts of self-administered amputation make your outdoor enthusiasm just go flaccid too? Well check out these 10 movies that make us fear nature and we guarantee you'll never have a hard-on for a hike again!

DAY OF THE ANIMALS (1977)

Nature activity: Hiking

Natural disaster: Radiation, resulting from the depletion of the ozone layer, drives both wild and domesticated animals insane, causing them to attack and kill humans.

Complex says: Now you know why cat eyes always glow in pictures!

LONG WEEKEND (1978)

Nature activity: Camping

Natural disaster: Nature's animal army attacks and unnerves an obnoxious Australian couple with a Godzilla-sized carbon footprint for offenses like discarding cigarette butts in dry brush, spraying insecticide on ants, and stealing eagle eggs.

Complex says: If there are no "Give a hoot, don't pollute!" signs, how the hell are we supposed to know we shouldn't start a brushfire?

VERTICAL LIMIT (2000)

Nature activity: Mountain climbing

Natural disaster: An attempt to scale K2, the second highest mountain in the world, goes horribly wrong as climbers fall through a patch of ice and become trapped in a cavern and the team attempting to rescue them starts an avalanche.

Complex says: Thanks, but we can get high at home.

OPEN WATER (2003)

Nature activity: Scuba diving

Natural disaster: A vacationing couple is accidentally left behind on a scuba dive and gets to enjoy starvation, dehydration, jellyfish, and hungry sharks.

Complex says: We haven't so much as waded in the ocean since Jaws (1975), but thanks for the reminder that creatures without gills should stay on shore.

WITHOUT A PADDLE (2004)

Nature activity: Camping, canoeing

Natural disaster: High school friends go looking for treasure and instead find a grizzly bear, which mistakes one of them for its cub and force feeds him a dead squirrel, and raging rapids, which lead to a waterfall.

Complex says: Eff what you heard. The only treasures to be found outside your home are the Golden Arches.

THE DESCENT (2005)

Nature activity: Caving

Natural disaster: While a group of hot chicks work their way through an unexplored cave system, a passage collapses behind them, trapping them with bloodthirsty subterranean humanoids, a.k.a. Crawlers.

Complex says: We are all for chicks exploring tight spaces together, but we can think of better places to do that, like, say, anywhere we can set up a tripod.

ROGUE (2007)

Nature activity: Crocodile watching

Natural disaster: Tourists on an Australian river cruise get a closer-than-anticipated look at an enormous, man-eating croc when their boat enters its territory and it picks them off one by one.

Complex says: Anytime you can spend money to put yourself in the path of a predator whose mastery of killing predates history, you simply have to do it! And you thought wearing Crocs was stupid. (It is.)

THE RUINS (2008)

Nature activity: Ruins exploration

Natural disaster: While checking out ruins in Mexico, American tourists are forced onto a temple by Mayan villagers, who are sacrificing them to the carnivorous living vines that cover it.

Complex says: Maybe it is vegan propaganda, but suddenly we can hear all the plants around us crying—out for blood.

FROZEN (2010)

Nature activity: Skiing

Natural disaster: Hoping to take one last late-night run down the mountain at a ski resort that's closing for the week, three college kids are trapped high up on a ski lift and must contend with frostbite and a pack of wolves waiting for dinner to drop out of the sky.

Complex says: Do we ski? Yeah, Wii ski.

PIRANHA 3D (2010)

Nature activity: Fishing, boating, cliff diving, swimming

Natural disaster: An earthquake frees nasty prehistoric piranhas from the buried lake they've survived in for two million years and totally fish sticks it to spring breakers.

Complex says: The fishiness of a hookup with a chick we met at the clinic was quite enough for us. (What? We were there...to support a friend!)