The best survival narratives, from “Robinson Crusoe” through “The Martian” all focus on “work the problem” details.

How do you survive a shipwreck or sailboat sinking (“All is Lost,” “Dead Calm”), being trapped in a forest fire, being marooned on Mars or kidnapped by murderers? The most fascinating part of such films are their “MacGuyver” DIY, reason-it-out elements.

In “Nowhere,” a new Spanish film (dubbed into English if you prefer) on Netflix, Anna Castillo plays Mia, an expectant mother, an emigrant fleeing a draconian “auesterity regime” Spain and mainland Europe.

“Governments are falling everywhere,” she and husband Nico (Tomar Novas) know. They’ve already had a child snatched from them as fascist “Not Enough for All” measures are enforced. She and Nico have paid a smuggler for their escape. But they are separated and she finds herself trapped in a shipping container that was washed overboard, supposedly on its way to safety, sanctuary and civilization — Ireland.

Mia must fight back her terror, find out what’s in the few crates in her floating coffin that might be useful, and reason and work her out of a deadly dilemma to save herself and their baby.

That’s what’s fascinating in this Albert Pintó (“Money Heist”) thriller. But in a bold and misguided move, we see a lot of the backstory that puts Mia in that predicament in a drawn-out opening act that explains the political situation spreading across Future Europe, lets us meet the murderous goons doing the enforcing and the pitiless predators smuggling people out — for a price.

The typical way to handle that sort of back story is to dole it out in quick impressions and slightly longer flashbacks. This straight-forward narrative is dull enough for long enough to make us ponder a much bolder take on this subject — casting a native African or Arab, setting her story in the present day, and daring the viewership, many of whom are going to be anti-migration, to root against her.

We see the ontrived way the couple is separated, get a glimpse of the authoritarianism, riots and chaos, and pause for a long “search the false-walled container” and government massacre that is more momentum killing than riveting.

But four screenwriters serve up all manner of melodramatic menaces facing the lone survivor in that container, from machine gun bullets to whales, leaks to the impossiblities of breaking out of it at sea. That’s all with a baby in her belly or in her care, because you just know her water’s going to break before the waters rise inside that metal box and add even mure urgency to the need to escape it.

The film’s problem-solving is mildly inventive, when it isn’t being creatively lazy. And Castillo maintains a plucky determination that hardens into resolve, with the occasional lapse into despair throughout.

If survival against the odds tales are your thing, it’s worth a watch despite the occasional eye-roll.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, profanity, childbirth

Cast: Anna Castillo, Tomar Novas and Tony Corvillo

Credits: Directed by Albert Pintó, scripted by Indiana Lista, Ernest Riera, Seanne Winslow and Teresa de Rosendo. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:49