Wildlike (2014)

Wildlike: Directed by Frank Hall Green. With Ella Purnell, Brian Geraghty, Diane Farr, Nolan Gerard Funk. After conditions in her new home become unbearable, a teenage girl runs away and befriends an older man preparing for a hike through the Alaskan wilderness.

“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.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe male leads were also perfectly cast and did an excellent job.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI 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.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI would have liked to have learned why the girlu0026#39;s father died… we didnu0026#39;t and so, under the assumption that her mother was an addict who was supposed to be in u0026#39;treatmentu0026#39; but who checked herself out and disappeared, did this poor young protagonist have a father who odu0026#39;d, was dysfunctional etc etc??u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI 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 u0026#39;easy routeu0026#39; with a long list of abusive motheru0026#39;s boyfriends for years… it certainly wasnu0026#39;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.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIn 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 u0026#39;life skillu0026#39;.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAll 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 u0026#39;cutu0026#39; without any even vaguely, not even close to an intelligent ending.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI 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.”