The Angulo family live in an apartment in New York's Lower East Side. Including the mother and father, there are nine of them. The boys spend considerable time re-enacting the contents of their favourite movies using home-made props and make-up. They are obsessed with movies in actual fact. But this can possibly be explained on account of the fact that these boys have more or less remained indoors their whole lives. Their domineering father being the primary reason this decision has been enforced, although the mother seems quite happy with the idea also. The boys seem okay with this situation, which from the outside seems incredibly unnatural and absurd. The boys existence makes me think of the life of a house cat; a type of feline that has been brought up and conditioned to stay indoors, such that it knows no different way of living, despite the fact that such an existence goes completely against the natural way of this type of animal. When its human beings submitting to this sort of thing though, it starts to seem more than a little bit strange.
The Wolfpack certainly has an unusual story to tell. For this reason I was somewhat disappointed with the film. While there is considerable interview material, for some reason there isn't all that much insight and I came away still being none the wiser about how this situation arose and was maintained for so many years. It's about people cut off from society through choice, yet you have to wonder how the social services could have allowed it. Children will go along with things because they know no different, unaware of what damage may be being done. I can't help think that these boys have been deprived of a considerable amount that they may come to fully realise in later life and their mother and father consequently seem unfit parents. The father in particular did not come out of this very well, his position was he was protesting against the system by choosing to not work and instead laze around at home drinking alcohol and watching TV. I wasn't very convinced by this stance. The boys seem surprisingly balanced considering their restrictive upbringing but I never even got a sense of what they felt when they finally emerged outside. So while the source material here is certainly of some interest, I can't say I thought too much of the execution and I left somewhat underwhelmed.
