DVD releases: 127 Hours

The grisly dilemma at the heart of the Saw movies gets a respectable but by no means less gnarly update in this oddball survival story from Danny Boyle. Based on the true story of Aron Ralston, an extreme sports fanatic who had to hack off his own arm after getting it trapped under a boulder while exploring a canyon in Utah, 127 Hours may take a more vibrant and exuberant approach to its "what would you do?" set-up than horror fans might like, but Boyle makes that work to his advantage.

Ditto the titular plot-spoiler, which far from ruining the tension of the situation, shows just how skilled a storyteller Boyle has become: we know Aron survived, but that doesn't prevent his remarkable tale being an intense and compelling one. Played by James Franco, Aron is presented as a self-reliant loner who likes to challenge himself, often at the expense of personal relationships with girlfriends, with colleagues and with his family. It's this fact that he has to confront when he discovers all the survival skills he's acquired over the years are rendered irrelevant by a large rock and a very hard place. The actual limb severing is predictably grisly, with Boyle refusing to hold back on letting us see and – more importantly – hear just what is involved. Nevertheless, like a lot of Boyle's darker work, it is also weirdly life-affirming, capturing without sentimentality what it means to get a second chance. Still, it's probably not for the faint of heart.

And if you're an oversensitive parent, neither is The Hole, a lovely ode from Gremlins director Joe Dante to the kind of mischievous 1980s family horror films with which he made his name. It's a tale of bickering brothers who bond over a heap of trouble after moving to a new town and finding a padlocked bottomless pit in the basement of their new house. Teaming up with the girl next door, their intrepid exploring unleashes a host of freaky occurrences involving clowns, dead children and dark strangers that Dante makes as intense as his ratings limitations allow. Mercifully, these scares are rooted in a plot that tackles surprisingly meaty themes in a way that's accessible for its target audience while being sophisticated enough to find favour among adults who remember how good it felt to be terrified as a kid.

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DVD releases: 127 Hours | The Hole