Review of Wildlike

Wildlike (2014)
7/10
All good until the lazy ending
26 April 2016
At no time did I not feel for the female lead in this movie. The actress portrayed the huge struggles in her life with her face and eyes despite the minimal script, or because of it... and all the trauma of being abused, afraid, entrapped, alone and homeless, and then surviving as best she could, with utmost realism. Not once did she err on the side of overacting or melodrama.

The male leads were also perfectly cast and did an excellent job.

I have no idea what was going on with the countryside in the Alaskan mountains, whereby either the camera was hand-held and the scenery was jumping or it was superimposed... that was weird but only lasted for about 10 minutes of the movie... not in a big way but it was a little amateurish.

I would have liked to have learned why the girl's father died... we didn't and so, under the assumption that her mother was an addict who was supposed to be in 'treatment' but who checked herself out and disappeared, did this poor young protagonist have a father who od'd, was dysfunctional etc etc??

I got the impression that the situation presenting in this movie regarding the sexual abuse was not new to the girl in the role and that perhaps this 14 year old had just being going the 'easy route' with a long list of abusive mother's boyfriends for years... it certainly wasn't portrayed as if this kind of abuse was new to her, rather that the way she had learned to cope with it was to deal with it as per the movie shows.

In my experience, if a young person feels unsupported and that there is no one who cares or to turn to, they develop low key coping mechanisms but begin to show the long term side effects of the abuse as a 'life skill'.

All very well done until the worst ending in living history, making me feel I had just sat and watched an intelligent and powerful movie until the director or somebody got bored and yelled 'cut' without any even vaguely, not even close to an intelligent ending.

I have no idea what happened. Frankly, the guy should have been taken to the police and so on. No idea what happens in the end. I was left feeling like a pancake... flat and covered in layers of sugar coated junk.
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