Shot in 2016, Alpha is Studio 8’s first theatrical release, and as debuts go, it's not bad. Set in the last Ice Age (20,000 years ago) in Europe, it tells the story of an adolescent boy who gets separated from his tribe on a hunting expedition and befriends a lone wolf on his quest to return home. The film’s marketing sold it as dramatic reenactment of sorts of how humans started to domesticate canines for both practical and emotional support. For the most part, it accomplishes that goal, though your level of cynicism and love of dogs will probably be the deciding factors in your ultimate level of enjoyment.
Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is the young man who’s tapped to go on his first major hunt with his tribe, chosen by his father the chief along with a few other lucky young men. Keda’s mother is uncertain as to whether or not he’s ready, and so is Keda, for that matter. Both of their fears come true when during the hunting party's attack on a pack of bison, Keda is thrown over a cliff and apparently killed. His father is distraught, but is eventually convinced to leave his son behind and return to the rest of the tribe.
Miraculously, Keda survives the brutal fall, but his injuries – particularly his leg – prevent him from catching up quickly and also make him vulnerable to predators. Enter Alpha.
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When a pack of wolves attacks him, Keda escapes up a tree, wounding one with the stone knife that’s his only remaining weapon. When the other wolves abandon the injured animal, Keda’s gentle nature refuses to allow him to leave the creature behind, so he nurses it back to health. The two share a recovery together, and over the course of what appears to be a few days forge a tense truce that’s solidified when Alpha realizes Keda is the only food source available. After that, the film kicks into high gear, and we’re treated to money montages of Keda and Alpha learning how to hunt together, play together and keep each other warm at night all the while Keda follows the stars back to his family. We won’t spoil the ending, but it’ll have you wondering if you missed a Disney title card at the beginning; it's a marked departure from the visceral way the film begins.
Alpha’s kind of a sneaky family film in that it doesn’t immediately present itself as something particularly sentimental. The first third showcases the rugged and difficult path to survival for humans of this era, and it makes sure not to shy away from opportunities to put audiences ill-at-ease. Keda’s “death” is truly harrowing, as is an attack on the herd of bison that opens the film before flashing back to the weeks before the hunt. The cinematography is indulgent in just the right ways, gripping tightly on Keda’s face as he’s dragged toward the edge of a cliff by a justifiably p*ssed bison only to widen and slam to a halt as he’s thrown over.
The 3-D experience is incredibly rewarding, given the scale of the landscape the movie attempts to capture. The use of actual animals in place of CGI creatures makes a literal world of difference. Alpha ups the stakes right out of the gate and presents us with something truly compelling. But it doesn’t maintain that throughout the second half except in brief moments.
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Once Keda and Alpha get down to the business of being friends (which, if the marketing is to be believed, is this movie’s sole reason for existing) it loses a lot of its originality and devolves into another boy-meets-wolf-then-eventually-is-allowed-to-pet-wolf-then-becomes-bffs-with-wolf story.
While it’s impossible to say exactly how man came to domesticate wolves or early canines, Alpha makes it seem a little too easy. In that sense, it drops the ball for anyone looking for something remotely anthropological in how Alpha and Keda’s relationship develops. It’s clear the film is far more interested in the emotional payoff of the relationship rather than how it was forged. But at the end of the day, that's not a terrible thing -- if you like dogs, you will 100% adore this movie.
The reason the film spends so much time with Keda and Alpha hunting together and playing together and saving each other is because it’s very adorable, if not downright sweet to watch. Sure, it’s shamelessly indulgent every time Alpha growls for food then whines when Keda refuses, but boy howdy, is it cute. When Keda gets trapped under some ice and Alpha jumps up and down helplessly in an attempt to free him, your heart will break into a million little pieces. And when Alpha waits until Keda’s asleep to snuggle his stubborn ass so he won’t freeze to death at night, you will probably cry even if you are the world’s biggest cat person.
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A lot of the credit for these scenes working as opposed to inducing eyerolls goes to Kodi Smit-McPhee (X-Men Apocalypse, Slow West). As Keda, his innocence in the face of the genuinely terrifying journey ahead of him endears him to us from minute one, and it’s a pleasure to watch him grow up before our eyes as he overcomes adversity after adversity. Alpha's essentially a coming-of-age film for both wolf and man, and the fact that it doesn’t aspire to anything deeper shouldn’t be a turn-off. It makes a for a refreshingly understated family film in comparison to the Pixar movies and broad comedies that seem to have overtaken the genre, and its PG-13 rating ensures a lack of gratuitous violence and nudity (enter anachronistic loin cloths).
Bottom line: if you want to dislike this movie, you could probably find a reason, but watching Alpha lick Keda’s face for the first time will make you wonder why you’re looking for one.
Alpha opens nationwide on August 17.