When Netflix released its Trainwreck documentaries last year, I watched them all, mouth agape at the terrifying Astroworld Tragedy and the perplexing Balloon Boy situation. Then there was the Poop Cruise, which churned stomachs as effectively as a boat on choppy waters. So I was intrigued when Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea hit the 2026 movie calendar, chronicling the 2012 Costa Concordia disaster. The documentary delivered a harrowing and infuriating story of a cruise gone very wrong, but it also did one thing that, as a mom, I absolutely can’t stand.
Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea takes us back to 2012, on the first night of a Costa Concordia cruise. More than 4,000 people were aboard the ship when it crashed into some rocks near Italy’s coast, and through survivor interviews, cellphone footage, emergency phone calls and more, we learned about the tragedy that resulted in 32 deaths. However, it was how the doc withheld one survivor’s fate that really bothered me.
Don't Make Me Wait Until The End To Know The Baby Survived
Two of the survivors interviewed for Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea were John and Meghan Scimone, who were on the Costa Concordia that night with their 1-year-old daughter Lila. Naturally, a lot of their experience revolved around keeping the baby safe as they tried to get off the boat.
I’ll go ahead and do what the documentary didn’t and confirm that Lila thankfully survived the ordeal and is thriving today as a teenager. The movie, however, was edited in a way that strung the viewer along to think something awful may have happened to her.
This really rubbed me the wrong way. As a mother, I have zero interest in stories — especially true ones — that portray serious harm to kids. So instead of merely focusing on the disaster at hand, I spent a good portion of my Nightmare at Sea viewing wondering if I should abandon ship, so to speak, just in case.
It’s not a new tactic to withhold the fate of your documentary subject. It’s actually really effective in another Netflix doc, The Deepest Breath (one of Netflix’s best sports movies, in my opinion) about freedivers Alessia Zecchini and Stephen Keenan, as well as in HBO Max’s The Dark Wizard about climber and BASE jumper Dean Potter.
However, unlike those stories, withholding the fact that 1-year-old Lila made it through was more distracting than necessary to the story. John and Meghan Scimone’s struggle was stressful enough without that question hanging in the abyss.
I empathized so much with the new mom being tortured by her baby’s cries, and it made me lightheaded to think of John handing his baby to a stranger while trying to escape a tipping lifeboat, with the choppy Mediterranean Sea beneath them.
The Scimones talked about having to slide 200 feet to the other side of the ship and even how they considered trying to swim for safety, though that was impossible with their baby. That is terrifying!
Even after the family made it off the sinking ship, Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea was edited to include only photos of videos of 1-year-old Lila, as the parents spoke about the psychologists and doctors they consulted about the trauma the baby had been through (a great parenting move, to be sure). It was only in the final minutes of the movie that Lila's fate was confirmed, when the foreboding music turned bright, and John and Meghan were shown talking about their 15-year-old daughter living a normal life.
Using the question of a child’s survival as a hook to keep viewers interested feels cheap to me, especially when you consider that a 5-year-old was among the victims of the Costa Concordia disaster.
Overall, I found the Shipwrecked documentary very much worth firing up your Netflix subscription for, but my aching mom heart did not love having to wait 87 minutes to find out that everything turned out OK for the Scimones’ daughter.
