Review of A Cry in the Wild

With only one character in most of the movie, it needed an excellent actor. Instead we get a child actor who's gotten too old for the part and never learned to do more than act as a prop to support someone else's performance. But hey, great hair I guess?

There was no concept of subtlety in portraying the main character's struggles, so we get a bunch of overly-dramatic situations interspersed with over-the-top tantrums when he struggles to survive, instead of the introspection, problem-solving, and determination that made the novel so excellent.

This was obviously a low-budget movie, made for TV by an educational channel (PBS). So many of its sins are understandable, and maybe even forgivable. But it would have been nice if they'd at least found a lake in an actual forest. Some scenes seem to be shot in a forest, but there is only a narrow tree line visible at one edge of the lake, with open fields and bare rock everywhere else.

Hopefully Hatchet gets an appropriate adaptation some day, with the excellent acting needed to carry the role, and a script was can appropriately covert the inner-dialogue of the novel. Preferably in a forest ;-)