Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Locked away from society in an apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the Angulo brothers learn about the outside world through the films that they watch. Nicknamed ‘The Wolfpack’, the brothers spend their childhood reenacting their favorite films using elaborate home-made props and costumes. Their world is shaken up when one of the brothers escapes and everything changes.
The Wolfpack is a genuinely singular documentary — the premise of seven siblings virtually imprisoned in a Manhattan apartment, subsisting on cinema as their only window to the world, is almost impossible to believe and utterly one-of-a-kind. That extraordinary novelty carries the film. The plot is engaging in its oddity but meanders without strong narrative architecture, and the cinematography is functional but rarely inspired. The brothers' on-camera presence is compelling yet unpolished, as expected of non-professional subjects. The ending is quietly hopeful without being dramatically resolved, which feels honest but somewhat anticlimactic.