Wildlife Reviews

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since there was a solid cast involved, I was really eager to check the damned thing. I was also rather curious to see what Paul Dano would do with his directorial debut. Well, at least, he definitely provided an impressive acting showcase as Jake Gyllenhaal and Carey Mulligan both delivered some strong performances. The young Ed Oxenbould was also pretty good but his task was actually much more difficult since he was basically a passive victim. To make it even more tricky for him, he had to show what his character was going through without much dialogue. And yet, in spite of the fine work of the cast involved, I still struggled to connect with the damned thing though. I guess the main issue I had was that the two main characters were just so downright unpleasant. Indeed, it has been a while since I have seen 2 parents who were so selfish and so full of self-pity. Of course, your first reflex would be to blame the father for leaving his wife and kid because he basically didn’t know what to do with himself. However, as soon as he was gone, the mother started to show such a bewildering behavior. Seriously, it got so bad that, after a while, I can’t say I was really rooting for her either. What was left was such a poor sweet boy who was basically witnessing his family imploding from the inside out which was rather depressing to be behold and, sometimes, even borderline infuriating. Anyway, to conclude, even if I had a hard time to connect with the material, the damned thing was very well made and the cast was involved was really strong so I still think it is worth a look.