The Wolfpack is a film shot largely within one fixed location, surveying the cramped, shabby Lower East Side apartment of the Angulos, a nine-member clan trapped within a rat maze of their own making. That captivity owes mostly to the somewhat deranged beliefs of patriarch Oscar, whose Hare Krishna-inspired personal philosophy necessitated keeping his six sons and one daughter safe from the dangers of ‘socialization.’ Having settled in Manhattan during the dark days of the early ‘90s, Angulo appears unaware of the great shifts in the safety and overall landscape of the neighborhood, changes which seemed to herald the erosion of his cult-leader influence, as the growing boys began to boldly venture out of the nest. It’s on one of these forays that the ‘wolfpack,’ dressed in matching Reservoir Dogs-style suits, was discovered by filmmaker Crystal Moselle, whose entrance into the apartment completes the transfer of control, documenting as the once-powerless children become the dominant force in the household.
Yet despite this centralized focus, this is still a movie limited by a lack of access, both to the family itself, the psychological and cultural imperatives that precipitated their situation and the emotional after-effects that result from it. The latter two are largely due to a lack of interest, both in expanding upon the basic outlines of the story and the complexities of unpacking such a thorny state of affairs. Competently but unimaginatively constructed, the film seems more than content to just observe; satisfied with its big scoop, it doesn’t dig or explicate much, settling for cursory interviews with the kids and a basic reconnoitering of the captive world they’ve constructed. Kept inside for the majority of their lives, the boys gleaned their primary impressions of the outside world from VHS tapes and DVDs, granting them a singularly warped view of human behavior. Documenting the results, The Wolfpack lingers over lovingly constructed cardboard props and weird holiday rituals, hoping that these key details will become concrete substitutes for an actual analysis of their circumstances.
These objects also function as the film’s central kernel of hope, demonstrating how, despite being deprived of genuine access to the rest of humanity, these young dreamers built their own window to it. This resulted not only in countless hours of at-home cinema appreciation but pet projects to recreate their favorite flicks, accomplished via the manual rewriting of scripts (copied via closed captions and the pause button), and the painstaking construction of props (among them a fantastic Batman outfit made from cereal boxes and yoga mats), leading to the subsequent Swede-ing of those movies. But while this pat ‘power of cinema’ through-line coasts on familiar clichés about the transformative effect of movies, it mostly ignores the downside of using them as a personality-shaping force. Interpreted this way, the kids’ elaborate efforts at recreation seem like desperate attempts to import fragments of mainstream life into their cloistered world, which underlines more about copying than creating.
Late revelations about some of the older boys’ passage into the outside world seem further manufactured to distract from the looming questions which gather around that passage, and it’s increasingly clear how many details are being left out in order to streamline this narrative. Moselle’s film never gawks, and the affection it exhibits for the boys is clear, but it’s still hard to not be suspicious about its intentions toward the pack. Mostly this seems like the kind of symbiotic discoverer-discovered relationship that’s stretched back throughout the history of showmanship, but the film’s refusal to acknowledge its presence as anything but a documenting force underlines the inherent shadiness of its premise. Attempting to tell this story as a humanist parable free from bad guys, blame or consequences, The Wolfpack does a good job of building up a sentimental connection to its subjects, but never gets close to exploring the full potential of a fascinating topic.