By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
Stories of young men surviving in the wilderness with only their wits, courage, and a loyal canine companion have endured for generations. Which is why it’s no surprise that the latest of the genre, 2018’s Alpha, is enjoying a new wave of popularity on Netflix. What is surprising is that this survival tale of a boy and his wolf is unlike other prehistoric caveman films, in that not only is it good, but there’s real scientific theory behind the plot.
A Boy And His Dog
Alpha’s big twist on the classic genre that even has its own subcategory on Netflix is its setting, 20,000 years in the past, with a hunting party contending with the unforgiving wilderness and wild animals, when the Chieftain’s son, Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee), falls off a cliff and is left for dead. Barely alive, the boy fights off a pack of wolves, leaving one injured that he slowly nurses back to health and decides to name Alpha. Together, the boy and his wolf battle hyenas, lions, harsh weather, and severe cold, and time and time again, they save each other’s lives.
Going into prehistory may be a twist on the standard Yukon setting for these stories, but that’s not the only thing Alpha dares to do differently from other films on Netflix: there’s no English, or for that matter, any other language we’d recognize today. The entire film is spoken in the prehistoric tribe’s language with subtitles on screen, and the result is that it draws you in even deeper into the harsh world of survival of the fittest. It’s a bold decision that pays off, but thanks to the film’s simple, well-executed plot and phenomenal acting throughout, it could work without the subtitles.
Alpha Uses Real Science To Bring History To Life
Strangely enough, Alpha is an origin movie, not for a Netflix franchise or anything like that, but for dogs. The techniques used by Keda and the way he hunts with his wild new companion synthesize multiple theories archaeologists have about dog domestication. Turns out those memes you may have seen about a wolf wondering what’s the worst thing that could happen about approaching the human’s campfire are close to reality.
Paying lip service to archaeology and biology puts Alpha ahead of 10,000 B.C., but Kodi Smit-McPhee’s ability to pull off emotional scenes against only a CGI wolf makes it the best prehistoric film in decades, and easily the best on Netflix today.. Critics gave the film an 87 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while audiences have it rated at 71 percent, which isn’t bad for what could have been a complete flop. Instead, the film was a small hit, pulling in $98.2 million at the box office, nearly double its budget, and remaining a streaming hit for seven years and counting.
Alpha is also a gorgeous film with sweeping shots of the vast wilderness and a striking use of shadow and light to make the fire feel like the only safe place in the world. Compounding that feeling in the European release was Morgan Freeman’s dulcet tones as the narrator, and though he’s left out of the version streaming on Netflix today, this is the one time a movie is better without Freeman’s involvement. If you had to read Hatchet in school, and you’ve seen White Fang, Iron Will, Eight Below, or any of the other canine-based survival films, you owe it to yourself to stream Kodi Smit-McPhee’s underrated prehistoric survival movie.
Alpha is now available on Netflix.
