The Wilds

Integral to the identity of this film is its focus on two really strong, conflicted, and funny roles for women. It's a story about a relationship dynamic I feel we rarely see explored - what it means to be someone's grown-up child - and the ways in which we must renegotiate the parental bond once we are fully-grown adults. When, if ever, should our mothers stop mothering us? What do we owe our parents and siblings? What can we forgive? And should we expect something in return? Ideological friction between these generations has - since various elections and referenda of the recent past - become a dominant and current social theme. But Anna's arc is one of ultimately accepting familial responsibilities. As is Helen's.

Over the course of The Wilds these wounds begin to heal, the family grows closer - and all it takes is them all becoming werewolves. Our happy ending is that, though cursed, at least they share the same curse. Perhaps, to a degree, every family has one.
Tonally, we'll see dark, impossible events, leavened and grounded by a comedy that combines a very Northern, Victoria Wood-like specificity of language with the middle-class emotional repression and understatement of something like a Wes Anderson movie. Netflix's 'I Am Not Okay With This' - a really stylish, darkly comic coming-of-age/superpowers story - is another important touchpoint, in that it uses its fantastical genre as a clear and specific metaphor for the character's social experience. As in Parasite or Hereditary, The Wilds takes a dispassionate look at a family under strain but uses precise, playful language and an undercurrent of palpable affection to keep from being truly cold or austere.