In this thrilling coming-of-age adventure, a troubled teen must face the dangers of the Alaskan wild, as well as her own past, in order to find her way home. Sent to stay with her uncle in Alaska while her mother is in treatment, 14-year-old Mackenzie (Ella Purnell) is forced to flee as her uncle's attention turns threatening. Unable to reach her mother and afraid that the authorities will return her to her uncle, she embarks on a journey across miles of wilderness to find a way back home to Seattle. As she plunges deeper into the Alaskan interior, a chance connection with gruff backpacker Bartlett (Bruce Greenwood) proves to be her only lifeline. Mackenzie shadows Bartlett across the rugged frontier, thwarting his efforts to cut her loose until he has no choice but to help her
Review
A beautiful and dramatic film --The Hollywood Reporter
Wildlike is quietly profound --The Examiner
Thrilling --Indiewire
Product details
Is Discontinued By Manufacturer
:
No
MPAA rating
:
NR (Not Rated)
Product Dimensions
:
0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 5.92 ounces
Item model number
:
35375310
Director
:
Frank Hall Green
Media Format
:
NTSC
Run time
:
1 hour and 44 minutes
Release date
:
May 24, 2016
Actors
:
Bruce Greenwood, Ella Purnell, Brian Geraghty, Diane Farr
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
As a survivor of childhood physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, I would like to add my voice to the admiring reviews here. I had not heard of *Wildlike* before it showed up on Amazon Prime Video, but it's the film that has most gripped me since another Bruce Greenwood film (with Denzel Washington and Paula Patton), *Deja Vu*. Over the course of *Wildlike,* Mackenzie (Ella Purnell) manages to be utterly alone; incredibly resilient; and incredibly vulnerable. One of the characteristics of being abused by those one is told to trust is that, generally, one can trust no one, not even oneself: decisions disintegrate into impulses that become other impulses, until one's own survival may be at stake. Mackenzie's aloneness in Denali, among so many vacationers and backpackers, is striking (and reminds me of my own time there, alone, in 1992). Her impulsive resourcefulness--sleeping in strangers' cars, pretending to be a hotel or motel guest, etc.--happens to land her in proximity to someone seemingly entirely unlike her. But Bart (Bruce Greenwood) is a straight shooter, and her persistence in pursuing him suggests some accurate intuition still working beneath abuse-driven impulses. Her vulnerability--when she pounds on his car window and says "I'm trying!"--and at the very end--is a masterful piece of performance. We don't know what Mackenzie's and Bart's relationship will be like once they are both back in Seattle, but given all that happens in the film, it seems unlikely to repeat an abusive pattern. Amazon uses the word "sanctuary" in its description of the overall direction of the film, and that seems particularly accurate to me--something I have to say I never found.
Damaged and confused people try all sorts of inappropriate solutions, in this case in a beautiful natural environment. I think many of the reviews that criticize the girl's obvious stupid choices don't realize the damage that abuse does to a young mind. People with no options and no power don't make good choices, especially if they're 14.
This movie is about a young girl (14 years old) who is in her searching years, obviously already trying to figure out her life (hints: wildly ugly makeup and constant chewing on her sleeves), who is abused by her uncle and then tries to escape from him. But where to? In a strange place with no resources (Alaska), she tries to get away. For those who don't know, a ship or airplane is the only way to get out of some of the towns in the Alaska panhandle, and Juneau is a small enough town that hiding there is not much of an option. She ends up choosing a slim option of following what appears to be a decent man on his own search for closure after his wife's death. This girl, like most 14 year olds, is naive and clueless, and that comes across as bad judgment in many cases.
I thought it was very realistic in showing how impaired young people can be when they have few options. The fact that so many reviewers hate her attitude is exactly why these kids often end up thrown away. Is it any wonder that she has a bad attitude? Lack of judgment, no money, no knowledge of geography, paranoid because the people closest to you have hurt you--good grief, she had a lot of things going against her just like in real life. She tried to get close to people in the only way she knew how, and it only hurt her more.
Some reviewers complained about the ending. It is a closure. I got it. You'll have to see it to decide, but I thought it was fine.
As a bonus, the entire movie shows the magnificent Alaska scenery, which hints at its harshness. If you spend any time outdoors, you can tell that she would have died if her chosen companion hadn't decided to help her. More bad choices, just like most 14 year olds I know. But her random companion choice worked out. Not a great pathway to a better life if you had other options (and the police do not always help in these situations), but it worked for her. Which is one of the messages of the movie: how unlikely it was that her life would become better without this random help.
A girl is sent to live with her Uncle in Alaska while her addict mother is in rehab in Alaska. She is molested by the Uncle and runs away. So far this is a believable plot. The movie jumps the shark when the girl finds some random man and follows him around. When the man realizes she is alone without a guardian or supplies and has followed him from his motel room onto a ferry and onto a bus headed into the wilderness he doesn't do what any caring or reasonable adult would do and notify authorities or even the bus driver. Then he's somehow shocked when she follows him off the bus when it drops him off in the wilderness and allows her to lead him/follow him into the Alaskan wilderness on a backpacking trip. She has no food, appropriate clothing, bear spray, shelter or skills. He had the option of waiting by the road or walking back on the road to alert someone to the issue. The only reason he would have continued with his plans is if he was interested in hurting her or allowing her to die out there.
One of the best things about this movie is the spectacular Alaskan scenery. Unfortunately, the version streaming on Amazon Prime is missing about a third of the frame, as the sides have been cropped to make the original 2.35:1 image fit 16:9 TVs. The whole time I was distracted because I could tell the framing was off in every one of these beautiful shots. Even two-shot close-ups cut off half an actor's face, which is a shame because the next best thing about this movie is the way the performances reveal so much more with the actors' faces than with the intentionally sparse dialogue. On top of that, Amazon Prime erroneously lists this as a 2021 movie, which made me wonder if it was a period piece, perhaps based on some recent true story, because the phones were clearly from 2014, when the movie really came out. So one star for Amazon's presentation of the film, three for the movie (which might have been 4 if I had been able to see it properly).
I have trouble trying to figure out why I ended up liking the movie. THe emotion side of it felt very real. yet so strange that this guy was cool with this young girl following him around.
