Alpha

Alpha (2018) is set twenty thousand years ago, at the end of the ice age. A young hunter falls during his first hunt, his tribe leaves him for dead, and he tries to get home alone. On the way he wounds a wolf and does not kill it, and the two of them start surviving together. The subject is the domestication of the dog. How that actually happened is not known, and the film offers a guess: mutual need, fear, and distance that shrinks over time. Its bravest decision is language. The dialogue is not in English; a constructed language was developed for the script and the film played with subtitles. That is an unusual choice for a studio picture. Albert Hughes directed, his first film without his brother Allen, after work like Menace II Society and From Hell that sat in entirely different territory. It was shot in Canada, in Alberta and British Columbia. It runs 97 minutes. Good for: survival stories, tales of humans and animals, and visually ambitious filmmaking. Less good for: the plot is very simple and there is no depth to the characters. Some of the landscapes are visibly digital. The animal danger and the injuries are harsh for small children.