Wildlike Film Analysis

Wildlike tells the story of a 14 year old girl who escapes her sexually abusive uncle by travelling across the Alaskan wilderness with an older widowed man named Bart. The unlikely pair strike up an, at first, reluctant friendship, but slowly come to have a deeper understanding of each other and the purpose behind their travels. The film features several disturbing scenes in which Mackenzie is molested by her uncle and does not shy away from portraying how hideous sexual abuse by a family member is. In the film, it was nearly impossible for any onlooker, such as the uncle 's friend or Bart at first, to realize that Mackenzie was being abused and needed help. This raises the question of how to tell if someone is in distress in public or if people can be more aware of dangerous situations in their surroundings, such as the frequent news stories about human traffickers caught with young women on airplanes. The film also tackles how sexual abuse can skew a young person 's perception of their body and worth as well as the

This stems from the very beginning of the film, when her uncle gifts her with a cell phone. Shortly after, she is sexually abused by him in her bedroom at night. This leads Mackenzie to internally correlate gifts or favors with sex, an assumption that will shape her decisions later on in the film. When Mackenzie seeks help from a young male hiker staying at an inn, she automatically assumes that he is interested in her for her body when he lets her shower in his room and that she must present herself in a desirable way. She is proven correct when the young man goes to kiss her, making it two times that she has been taken advantage of by men during her stay in Alaska. Mackenzie has been led to believe that she must sexually earn any nice thing done for her and that her value as a person comes from her