Welcome back to Movie Recaps. Today I will show you prehistorical adventure film from 2018, titled
Alpha. Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care. Twenty thousand years ago in prehistoric Europe,
a small group of hunters led by their leader Tau gets ready to attack a herd of steppe bison.
They create a wall of spears that causes the bison to stampede off a cliff, but three of them stay
back, and one particular bull goes after Tau's son Keda. After savagely hitting him with its horns,
it drags him to the edge of the cliff, where Keda falls to the abyss after Tau hits the beast with
his spear. This all begins one week earlier, when the teenagers of the tribe are tested on their
spear-making skills. The only ones to pass are Keda and his friend Kappa, so they will be brought
to the last hunting expedition before winter comes. As part of the ritual that marks them as
adults now, they also get beat up by the other men to learn that pain will journey with them,
and they are blessed by the local shaman by the campfire. Later, while pretending to be asleep,
Keda overhears Tau and his mother Rho talking. Rho does not think he is ready to hunt because
he leads with his heart, not his spear, but Tau believes Keda must do his part and prove himself
to the tribe. The next morning, the hunting party leaves after saying goodbye to their loved ones
and getting the Shaman's blessing, Rho even gives Keda an extra piece of fur as a safety token.
The party begins traveling across the land by following the Sacred Path left by their ancestors,
who have made a series of rock sculptures that leave a trail for them to follow - the
hand paintings on them point at the direction they must take to the hunting ground. During the trip,
they come across another hunting party led by Xi, an old friend of Tau's who has recently lost his
son. Both parties begin traveling together then. Whenever he has the chance, Keda tries to prove
himself to his father, but he is not able to start a fire and can not bring himself to kill the boar
the other men capture, so he feels like a failure. One night, while they are eating by the fire,
they hear a noise behind them, so they swiftly jump onto a defensive position.
When nothing comes, they quickly relax, which proves to be a mistake: a cave lion suddenly
jumps out and snatches Kappa, who it takes away to feed on. The next morning, the men build a cairn
to give Kappa a memorial service that symbolizes the passing of one's spirit to the afterlife.
The trip continues with only stops to hunt and rest. One evening, when they find a large and
safe cave to sleep in, Tau takes the chance to make Keda get a tattoo of the constellations just
like him, that way he will always find a way home. It takes a good amount of days, but eventually,
they find a trail of dump that takes them to a herd of steppe bison, which brings the story back
to the beginning. As he falls, Keda tries to hold onto a rough cliff edge, but he slips and lands
on a further ledge, where he breaks a leg and falls unconscious. Desperate to save his son,
Tau tries to climb down, but his fellow hunters stop him, pointing out it is too late. While the
men bring the sleds to carry the bison on, Tau stays by the edge of the cliff, crying in denial.
Now that their hunt has been divided equally, Xi's party leaves on their own to return to their home,
so Tau's group has one last night of camping before convincing their leader is time to move on.
The following morning, Tau builds another cairn while tears of grief continue to fall. Many hours
after the party is gone, a vulture lands on Keda and tries to feed on him. This makes him wake up,
and after pushing the bird off him by wringing its neck, he realizes the situation he is in.
Dragging his broken leg behind him, Keda tries to climb down, but there are not enough rough
edges for him to hold on, and ends up hanging in there for a long, excruciating moment. Soon after,
a storm arrives and begins flooding the ground below him, so Keda comes to terms with what he
has to do and lets go of his grip, landing in the water and falling unconscious again. When he wakes
up the next morning, it has stopped raining and the flooding is gone. After drinking water from a
poodle and splinting his injured foot, Keda slowly makes his way back to the top of the cliff, where
he finds the memorial his father left for him. But Keda kicks it out in frustration when he realizes
he has been left alone and must find his way home on his own. Keda begins traveling alone. He feeds
himself bugs, fills his canteen in any poodle he can find, and climbs trees to sleep safely at
night away from predators. When a pack of wolves finds him in the middle of the day, Keda runs to
a tree again, stabbing one of the wolves when it grabs his leg before he finally climbs to safety.
He stays on top of the tree until the wolves get tired of waiting and they all leave except for the
one Keda injured. He prepares a spear to finish it off, but he can not bring himself to do it,
so he decides to ignore it instead. Except Keda can not do that either - the wolf's painful
whining is too much to hear. Keda decides to help and, after tying up its snout not to get bitten,
he picks up the wolf and carries it to the lake in order to clean its wound.
Sadly they can not rest there for long because there are hyenas nearby,
so Keda carries the wolf again until they find shelter in a cave where they can sleep safely.
The next morning, Keda finds a mortar near a bunch of bones and uses it to create a plant salve that
he applies on his foot while the wolf manages to free his snout. Seeing as the animal is behaving,
Keda decides to share his water with it, which the wolf finally accepts after lots of growling.
Keda goes as far as cleaning the wound with the fur his mother gave him and sharing the worms he
finds with the wolf as well. But worms are not enough to keep themselves fed, so Keda finally
gets brave enough to make his first hunt: he kills a rabbit with a rock and even manages to start a
fire at last to cook it. The wolf tries to take the rabbit from him, but Keda quickly pushes him
away, remembering the lessons about leadership his father has taught him. He establishes dominance
by always eating first and feeding the wolf after he is done. No matter how much he shares with it,
though, the wolf still will not allow him to touch it. Winter is quickly approaching and Keda must
find a way home before snow begins to fall - he does not think he can make it without his father,
but he has to try. After putting together enough supplies and struggling with the wolf to get his
fur back, Keda leaves the cave and begins walking his way back, feeling frustrated because the wolf
will not stop following him no matter how many times he tells it to go away. Eventually, Keda
gives up and accepts the wolf as his new travel companion, even training it to come over when he
whistles. Their first attempts at hunting together are a complete bust, but after a few tries,
they manage to find a way to sync their attacks and get their prey without too much effort.
At night, Keda double-checks they are going in the right direction by using the constellation tattoo
on his hand, and the wolf begins sleeping next to him, even allowing him to touch it now that
he has gained his trust. After an afternoon spent in the lake bathing and fishing, Keda decides to
name the wolf Alpha. Their trip is taking so long that winter finally catches up with them and snow
starts to fall. One evening while they are eating by the bonfire, they are approached by a pack of
wolves that turns out to be Alpha's family. Knowing what is like to miss your loved ones,
Keda tells Alpha to go with them, so now he is left to continue traveling alone. As time passes,
snowstorms become more common, so Keda is having difficulty making much progress each day,
especially when he has a devastating dream of Tau arriving home and giving Rho the bad news.
After a few days of walking through yet another storm, he comes across Alpha and its pack, but
when he runs towards them, the ice breaks under his feet and he falls into the freezing water.
As his mother's fur and most of his equipment float away, Keda hits the ice with his knife and
manages to break enough to let Alpha drag him out. The two of them begin traveling together again,
and later that night, Keda sleeps hugging Alpha to regain some warmth in his freezing body.
After advancing a few more miles, they find a trail of tracks that they follow to a hut,
but sadly, the owner has frozen to death. There is no food to be found, but Keda does grab a bow
and arrow to hunt, ignoring Alpha's worry when he suddenly begins to cough up blood. Sometime later,
the duo finds itself between a rock and a hard place: there are hyenas following them but also
a very dangerous storm ahead of them, so they run until they find a cave to hide in. Unfortunately,
the place is not empty: there is a cave lion that does not hesitate to attack them.
Alpha fights it fiercely while Keda puts the arrow on his bow, concentrating to hit the right target.
He manages to kill the lion and save Alpha, who still comes out heavily wounded from the fight.
When they go back to very slowly traveling in the middle of the snowstorm,
they find the sculpture that marks the Sacred Path, so Keda knows they must be close. His hope
gets stronger when the northern lights appear above them one night, a sign that his ancestors
must be guiding them. However, Alpha is too weak to keep going, and one day he finally collapses.
Not wanting to leave his friend behind, Keda begins to carry the wolf in his arms,
ignoring the fact he is also weak and continues to cough up blood. The conditions are so harsh that
Keda eventually collapses as well. But then, he finds encouragement in a memory that comes to him
in a dream: it is the conversation he overheard his parents having the night before they left.
To help Rho not to worry, Tau had told her Keda is stronger than even himself knows.
With newly gained strength gained from his father's belief in him, Keda wakes up and picks
up Alpha again, carrying it through the storm until they finally make it back to his tribe.
Nobody can believe what they are seeing, and Tau cries as he tells his son how proud he is
before taking him and the wolf into a tent to be taken care of. After Keda is patched up and fed,
the shaman examines Alpha, quickly realizing what its problem is: Alpha is actually female,
and she is giving birth. All the puppies are born safely and healthy, and the tribe welcomes
them as part of the family. Years later, once the puppies have become proper adult wolves,
they are assigned to hunters as partners and are taken to the next great hunt before winter.