November 27, 2015 -- What would happen if you raised seven children in isolation from the rest of society with only movies to show them what the rest of the world is like? Sounds like a strange social experiment, but that very situation is explored in this documentary film about a family which did just that. I guess the name of the film is derived from the story about a boy raised by wolves.

This strange family is led by a father from South America, Oscar Angulo, who expresses extreme fears about the people who live in the city of New York, and the rest of American society in general, despite the fact he has been able to live off the kindness of society for years without working at all.

Angulo, who appears infrequently on screen, doesn't make much sense when he talks, but he sounds a bit like a hippie who considers work to be enslavement. Angulo's wife, Susanne, seems nice enough, but is also very restricted by her husbands numerous rules against leaving the apartment and interacting with the rest of society.

The children, mainly the brothers Mukunda, Narayana, Govinda, Bhagavan, Krisna (Glenn), and Jagadesh (Eddie) are the ones who talk the most about their experience in this strange environment. Their sister, Visnu, is barely seen. We see them act out movies with a variety of self-manufactured costumes and props. One boy tells a story of a police raid for guns. Police found many guns in the apartment, all fake, and all made by the children themselves.

The children were sometimes allowed to leave the apartment, as many as nine times in a single year. One year, however, they didn't leave the apartment at all. Mukunda was the first to defy his father and leave the apartment on his own, wearing, of all things, a Michael Myers mask (“Halloween” movie). The police picked him up and put him in the hospital with the other crazies before he was released. According to the documentary, Mukunda's act of leaving was a watershed event in the family, leading to far more interaction with society.

The documentary follows the Angulo brothers on a trip to the beach, and there is also a family outing to an orchard. Both Oscar and Susanne say in the film they would rather have lived on a farm than in their apartment, but they didn't have the money to do that. These kids obviously have no experience trying to play outdoor games. Their play has been confined to acting out movies and making music. Despite living on a diet of pasta, most of them are a lot thinner and more healthy looking than most kids are these days.

The brothers all speak of their love for their mother, but when talking about their father, Oscar, the dislike for him becomes quite evident at times. There is real anger there. The film ends on an upbeat note with Mukunda moving out and getting a job. Some scenes from a film by Mukunda are shown at the end. Mukunda's film “Mirror Heart,” featured in the Nitehawk Shorts Festival, can be seen on YouTube.

The film makes you wonder about what kinds of lives these children are going to have. They have so little knowledge of the world, and how to interact with other people. This family is not going to convert anyone to the idea of home schooling. This family can be seen as an extreme example of something a lot more common: Parents who are overprotective of their kids. This film rates a B.

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Copyright © 2015 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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