Crystal Moselle’s documentary The Wolfpack addresses the most incredible subject

REVIEW: The Wolfpack documentary shows epic homemade footage the like you have never seen before in a tale so strange only real life could compose it.

THE WOLFPACK (M)

Director: Crystal Moselle (documentary debut)

Starring: Govinda, Naryana. Mukunda, Krisna, Jagadesh and Visnu Angulo.

Rating: ***1/2

What they do is what they view

For her first documentary, rookie US filmmaker Crystal Moselle has found the most incredible subject.

The jury will remain out as to whether Moselle has really nailed The Wolfpack. However, the sheer singularity of the world we enter here should be more than satisfactory for intrigued viewers.

And really, who could not be intrigued by the story of the Angulo brothers, a tale so strange that only real life could have composed it?

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Get a load of this. The six Angulo boys were homeschooled inside a tiny New York apartment, and very rarely permitted to leave.

Their one pipeline to the world were the thousands of movies their control-freak of a dad (somewhat contradictorily) allowed them to watch repeatedly.

The Angulo boys who became The Wolfpack. Picture: Madman films

A perfect storm swept the young Angulos on a path towards freedom. A combo of too much time on their hands and too much imagination coursing their brains put the six of them to work as one.

All of a sudden, the Angulos were fastidiously remaking their favourite movies with whatever scarce resources were available to them.

The footage from these homemade epics is the true calling card of The Wolfpack. You literally have seen nothing like it before.

The Angulos’ let their imagination run wild to make movies that were known as The Wolfpack.

A scene from the movie The Wolfpack. Picture: Madman Films

And yet, despite watching enough Tarantino, Scorsese and Nolan movies to warp time itself, the six Angulo lads come across as friendly, relatively well-adjusted interviewees.

Just why this is so is but one of many loose ends Moselle leaves dangling as director. The boys’ paranoid and abusive father could have used some more time under a harsher spotlight than the light going-over he gets here.

Eddie Angulo (from left), Mukunda Angulo, director Crystal Moselle, Govinda Angulo and Narayana Angulo at the London Gala screening of The Wolfpack in England. Picture: Ben A. Pruchnie / Getty Images

The Wolfpack is now showing at the Cinema Nova (Victoria) and Dendy Newtown (NSW). Other states to follow

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Originally published as Crystal Moselle’s documentary The Wolfpack addresses the most incredible subject