Taika Waititi's Film The Hunt For The Wilderpeople

Often times, movies can have hidden meanings that go beyond the entertaining aspects of films. Directors can use these meanings to highlight problems within the world that they believe need to be dealt with. Director Taika Waititi uses his film, The Hunt for The Wilderpeople, to expose problems within Child Welfare Services. The Hunt for The Wilderpeople is shot in the “bush,” also known as the wild of New Zealand. A 13-year-old foster boy named Ricky Baker is dropped off at his new foster home to husband and wife, Bella and Hec. When Ricky first arrives, the director makes it known that he has had a troubled past by showing a montage of different crimes Ricky has committed. Clips of Ricky stealing, making graffiti, destroying property, and

Hec, on the other hand, shows his distaste in Ricky by neglecting him as soon as he meets him. Just as Ricky is beginning to adapt and enjoy his new life on the farm, Bella dies of unknown reasons. Ricky is now forced to go back to the Child Welfare Services whom he hates. He begs Hec to stay with him, but Hec, who already doesn’t want Ricky, tells him he has to leave. Ricky decides his only option is to run away and ends up lost in the woods. Hec eventually finds him and as he tries to bring him home, injures his foot. The two of them camp out in the woods for two months and begin to bond. Ricky learns about the terrain of New Zealand and how to survive on his own. The awkwardness between the two dies down and the audience can see a good relationship forming between them. As Ricky and Hec make their way through the woods, they come across a couple of hunters at an old hunting lodge and find out there’s a warrant out for the two of them. A scuffle breaks out between Hec and the hunters when they assume Hec kidnapped Ricky and performed sexual acts with him. Ricky and Hec leave the lodge and go on the run for five months dodging the police, Child Welfare agents and hunters. During this

Jim Moye writes in The Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy that “Most states are not financially or logistically equipped to handle such an endeavor properly” (Moye 70). States are failing to support and keep up with these children who have been put in terrible situations. In Maryland, the state legislature “threatened to withhold funding for the state’s foster care system because the Child Welfare authorities failed to prove that they had adequately kept track of more than 12,000 children in the Maryland foster care system” (Moye 71). Another example of a state that has trouble keeping up with foster children is New York. Welfare statistics show that there’s not enough room or money to house all the foster children. Rachel L. Swarns of the New York Times reports that “Over the last six months more than 1000 foster kids, mostly teen-agers, have spent at least one night huddled on the floor of the city’s placement office while caseworkers frantically searched for beds.” These children, who are going through important stages of their lives, have nowhere to sleep and no one to count on. Something needs to change for these kids or they are going to grow up with nothing. When the foster children eventually age out of the system, the transition to the adult world is tough for them because they rely so much on state-provided care. Miller, Paschell, and Azar of Science Direct write that, “Close to 21,000 youth age out of the