Review of Animal Kingdom (2010) by Shiira — 09 Sep 2010

The dead woman on the couch, she may not look like a candidate for mother of the year, but don't let her death by misadventure fool you. Joshua's mother, a heroin addict, was indeed a heroine, a lioness who protected her cub from the other lions back home, maneaters all, unafraid to devour their own kind, even the young, as it turns out, when the circumstances surrounding the Cody family change, prompting the familial animals to reveal themselves for what they are, survivalists, who abide by the law of the wild; kill or be killed.

Joshua(James Frecheville), the orphaned cub, under the persuasion of fake maternal love, is slow to distinguish friend from foe, although once the boy learns how to spot a predator, he adjusts to their backhanded maneuvers and goes on the offensive, but not before his initial naivety toward wild beasts, both male and female, results in a senseless, thoroughly preventable death.

Mother might have been a junkie, but mother knew best. While the nature/nurture debate rages on, in "Animal Kingdom", nurture wins. It's Joshua's environment that turns him into a killer; he learns then unlearns the pack mentality, he adapts, just in the nick of time, before blind loyalty finishes him off.

"Animal Kingdom" fascinates. This pack he runs with is no ordinary pack. Like any group of wild beasts, the Cody family is led by an alpha male(Barry, played by Joel Edgerton), and a contender to the throne(Pope, played by Ben Mendelsohn), but actually it's Janine(Jacki Weaver), the den mother, Joshua's grandma, who turns out to be the fiercest of them all.

The boy may be family, but he's been away for far too long a period; he's an outsider, and during the interim of his estrangement, the years in which Janine's sons, Joshua's uncles, had made themselves known to the police, this seemingly warm-hearted old woman forgot her grandson's scent.

After the betrayal, the moviegoer backtracks to that expository scene where Joshua first meets the family in grandma's living room. From the kitchen, Janine runs the blender, it's the buzzsaw that Joshua never hears; he misses the foreboding cacophony, accepting the domestic noise at face value.