woensdag 13 mei 2015

(Average) Wolf Children

Movie in one sentence:
Follow the life of a woman who gets nothing but shit as a reward for her undying motivation and effort.

Movie in more sentences:
A young woman meets a werewolf and ends up having two children with him. When the man dies in an accident, she is left alone to take care of these small children who have the ability to transform.



I saw a scene from this movie float by at Facebook and was curious enough to check it out, which I just did today.

What to say that I didn't already say in my one-sentence description..
It was rather frustrating to see how this woman was so positive in life, while she had nothing to show for it, yet still claimed she did. In my opinion, anyway.
Both children were absolute assholes when they were little, and the boy in his later life turned, dare I say, into quite the entitled, lazy, little bitch.

The story of this movie looks great on paper; a girl meets a reserved man, they bond, he reveals to her he's a wolf, she doesn't care and they start living together, they have two children, the man tragically passes away, the woman does all she can to keep the secret of her children hidden and to keep them fed, the children grow up having different opinions about their nature and how they should live, etc, but all this only works if there's enough time spent on the relationships, and I don't think that's the case here. There was more time spent showing how the mother fixes the roof of her new house and tried to grow vegetables. The children only get one or two lines of dialogue explaining how they feel, and that's it. The rest of the movie is footage of sprinting wolves with human hairdos.

I just didn't know what to think of these people. The girl suddenly changes from being active to silent and the boy from being whiny to emo. There is logic behind it, but the movie rushes their transformation, so I can't empathize with the choices these characters make. The girl's distinct personality got erased as she got older and the boy became a different kind of annoying. Off-screen he found this old fox that teaches him how to be an animal, and the very moment this fox is confirmed to be dying, this 10 year old boy is all too eager to announce to his mother he's planning to be the new Lion King. Nature doesn't need a leader, kid, this isn't a Disney movie. Just be honest with her and say you don't give a damn about your family and the possible friends you could've made in the future. Because you're socially lazy and only attended school for a week, and base your opinion on human life on a week's experience.

At the end of the movie I just cared so little about these characters and I felt frustration for the mother who ended up being alone, without anyone telling her thanks. Except for her dead husband, of course, so you know she hallucinated that "thanks" for herself just to keep her cool in this shit life.
I didn't think this movie would turn me off like this, as it's clear it tried to tell multiple messages, all of them I can appreciate, but most events in this movie just felt bitter to me.
I don't know how else to explain it.