By Dennis Hartley

Many were increasingly of the opinion [that humans] made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.

― Douglas Adams, from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

What makes us “human”…is it nature, or nurture? How many times have you heard admonishments like “don’t wolf your food” or “you’re acting like an animal”? Are we not mammals, after all?

Writer-director David Verbeek tackles that age-old question in this speculative fiction yarn about the discovery of a young woman (Jessica Reynolds) who has literally been raised by wolves. Naturally, her first accommodation in the “civilized” world is a cold, clinical research facility, where she is poked and prodded and ogled at by people in white coats.

Frightened and confused, she barely has time to acclimate to these alien surroundings before a pair of cultish survivalists spirit her away to an abandoned offshore oil rig. The couple imprint themselves as parental figures and indoctrinate her into their idiosyncratic vision of an environmental apocalypse.

The trio seem well on their way to forming a cozy family unit-until the young woman discovers (much to her chagrin) that her “parents” have feet of clay (you can take the wolf-girl out of the forest…).

This territory has been explored in films like The Wild Child, The Emerald Forest, and Charly; but Verbeek has put a unique spin on some time-worn themes. His secret weapon is Reynolds, who delivers an extraordinary performance that runs the gamut from running around on all fours and dining al fresco on small game to making small talk with her customers at the grocery checkout counter.