The Wolfpack

The Wolfpack (15)

USA 2015 90 mins  Dir: Crystal Moselle

A fascinating if increasingly frustrating documentary that explores the outer limits of home-schooling and over-protective parenting, The Wolfpack opens with a striking sequence in which the six male Angulo siblings dress up in suits and shades to re-enact scenes from Reservoir Dogs in their rundown housing project apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Then comes the stinger: these teenagers rarely leave the apartment. Indeed, they once spent an entire year without going outside. They’re home-schooled by their mother and their controlling father is the only member of the family with access to the front door keys.

We learn that midwest farmgirl Susanne met Peruvian tour guide Oscar on the hippy trail. Since he considered himself too spiritually enlightened to work and didn’t trust the government, the couple settled in their New York apartment to breed their own ‘tribe’, with Susanne squeezing out as many offspring as her fertility would permit. (There’s also a daughter, who’s described as developmentally challenged and barely appears in the film.) The boys, each of whom have Krishna-inspired culty names and waist-length hair, view the world through the prism of their favourite Hollywood movies, painstakingly writing out the scripts for their costumed re-enactments. “It makes me feel like I’m living… sort of,” says one of them, rather sadly. They have no friends, are taught to be fearful of the outside world, and are instructed never to look at strangers. As filmmaker Crystal Moselle joins them, the family is clearly heading towards a crisis point. Hormones are raging, the siblings are becoming increasingly rebellious and Oscar has retreated to his room with a bottle. Then one of the boys breaks ranks and ventures outside without permission. In a Michael Myers mask.

The story we’re told is that Crystal Moselle happened across the distinctively attired Angulos on the streets of New York and persuaded them to allow her to make a film about their lives. But too many questions go unaddressed. Why, for example, would Oscar, who doesn’t speak until an hour into The Wolfpack and then spouts a stream of incoherent gibberish, agree to let a camera crew into his home? What on earth could possibly be in it for him? Then there’s the constant suspicion of a more disturbing story of abuse that remains untold. One of the boys speaks of his hatred for his father, remarking darkly that there are some things you don’t get over and can’t forgive. We’re willing Moselle on to enquire: “What things, exactly?” But the question is never posed.

That said, there are some fascinating moments here. In contrast to their father and rather cowed mother, the boys are articulate and self-aware. Their movie reconstructions are imaginatively and meticulously staged. There’s even an impressive Batman outfit constructed, in trad Blue Peter style, from old yoga mats and cereal boxes. And the extraordinary sequence where they all visit the Coney Island beach for the first time is rather like watching rescued battery hens taking their first tentative steps onto grass.