When Virginia and her husband Jack spend a long weekend in the idyllic countryside, they encounter a creature that tears their lives apart. While the attack has an effect on each of them, it brings out the worst in Jack.
“Alpha” is your basic “boy and his dog” story, except this time the dog is a wolf and the story takes place twenty-thousand years ago. This is marketed as a film about the “origins of man’s best friend,” but if you ask me, it’s an ad designed to guilt you into buying your kids a wolf. They’ll want one too after seeing “Alpha.” In fact, the filmmakers should have just called this movie “PUH-PEEEEEE!!!” Because judging by the audience’s oohing and aahing at my IMAX 3D screening, people were all too eager to project their own warm and fuzzy domesticated canine feelings onto a wild animal who would eat them without a second thought.
But let’s play the hand we’re dealt here. The boy, Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is first seen bison hunting with his tribe. He is the son of Tau (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson), the “alpha” of his people. Greatness is expected of Keda, yet he’s a sensitive lad who has a problem with killing the animals. “Life is for the strong!” his father lectures after Keda fails to finish off a wounded animal. “You must earn it!” During the hunt, which is the first of many well-staged and visually arresting set pieces, Keda’s hesitation allows him to be bested by his prey; the result sends him plummeting over a steep cliff.