Wildwood (2026)

[00:00:00] Hello my friends, and welcome back to Movie Deputy Reviews. As you can tell by the title and the poster over here on my side, for those watching over here on our YouTube channel, thank you very much for coming back. I am so excited to bring this movie to you. I have been checking out the trailers since they were at the very first announced and I've been so excited every one of the trailer, every time one of the trailers came up because I'm like, this movie looks like kind of a modern day labyrinth of sorts of. And that's what I thought based on the trailers alone. [00:00:29] But trust me, I hope you're doing this for all of my reviews anyways. But I hope you stay through to the end because there is a lot to unpack with this movie. I went to see this movie day before yesterday and I wasn't sure. [00:00:45] Even though I like try to hype it up in my brain, I try to get all excited and all prepared for whatever the movie is going to be. I try to come in there with somewhat tempered expectations because I've seen movies where the best parts of the movies are in the trailer and parts where the trailer makes no sense compared to the movie. [00:01:02] And so even though I was so excited to see this one, I tried to temper my expectations back just a little bit. [00:01:09] Well, I kind of couldn't help it with this one. I just, I went in there with maybe a little bit more enthusiasm than I sometimes do because I'm like, okay, if the movie is half as good as these trailers are, it's going to be exceptional. [00:01:21] That was my mindset going into this. [00:01:24] And if you don't already know, I sit there during the movie and I turn my phone down to the lowest brightness. I have a black screen and I use dark gray lettering and I take notes throughout the movie. [00:01:33] And then I sometimes go back and think about things and I make other notes to those notes and then I go back and rewatch the movie again because I'm like, okay, did I maybe misinterpret something? [00:01:44] And then I go back and I compare my notes again and I can take the notes again. And I took a ton of notes on Wildwood. That's actually what I'm doing right here. So I'm just pulling it up on my phone. [00:01:55] I took all of these notes and if you're curious about what my notes say, I always include my, the complex, the entirety of my notes underneath in the podcast description. And that'll also be in the YouTube description as well. And that includes the entirety of the notes that I took while watching this movie. And I'm going to be referring to that a little bit when I'm doing the review here just because there's so much to unpack here. [00:02:18] It is important to mention that the movie is rated a PG13. Again, I normally don't talk about that a whole lot, but considering the content of this movie, that is a conservative estimate. I am definitely giving Wildwood a guilty rating. It is. It looks like a kids movie. It really does. This is being played out like a kids movie. [00:02:38] It's not a kids movie. It is exceptional. The visuals are exceptional. [00:02:46] The story, on the other hand, we're going to get into that and because there is a lot to unpack here. But before we get into this too deep, I want to share the trailer with you and I'll pause it any necessary moments or anything like that, but I definitely want to share that with you. [00:03:02] If you are listening over on our podcast, I will try to be descriptive and important parts of that as well. [00:03:10] So let's check this out. If you haven't already had a chance to see the trailers yet, this is going to be a first. [00:03:19] They told me what happened to you, to your son. [00:03:26] Is it true? [00:03:32] Feeling my way through the darkness. [00:03:40] Guided by. [00:03:46] The scene that it was just. Just showing here a little bit. And maybe to give a little context even for those watching this part is it shows Prue, the young girl, asking Alexandra, who is the. The tall blonde, asking about what happened to her son, Is it true? And then it shows the family getting ready to go on a horseback ride. And it shows something tragic happening to the son on this horseback ride. [00:04:30] And here it shows Prue playing with her younger brother, Mac. And it's showing Alexandra as she's walking across this illuminated bridge. And it's very reminiscent of like the Snow Queen of that. And so I'm going to be mentioning a lot of other movie references that this kind of goes into a little bit more on that as well. [00:05:03] The woods have become a savage place. [00:05:08] They took my brother. [00:05:11] Please, I need your help. [00:05:33] How far will you go to get back somebody you love? [00:05:43] I promised I'd take care of him. [00:05:47] I will tear apart this forest and bring back what it took from me. [00:05:58] I see it in you. [00:06:00] You're not the kind to give up. [00:06:22] And that trailer is very. [00:06:24] Even after watching the movie, the trailer still gives me goosebumps. [00:06:28] But this is basically Prue and her younger brother. [00:06:34] Her brother gets taken by the ravens and don't worry, that's not a spoiler. That's actually here in the trailer. [00:06:40] But, Quincy, what are you doing? [00:06:44] If you don't know, I'm a crazy cat lady. And one of my seven are in here. He's in here with me trying to scratch at my feet. [00:06:52] But this is an adventure of Prue's that goes into Wildwood. [00:06:57] Now, I'm going to. [00:07:00] I don't usually do this on recording. I'm actually going to click over so I can look at one of my notes that I don't have on my computer here. [00:07:06] But it's one of the things in the movie here. Totally. That really helps. [00:07:15] There we go. Long ago, the Ivy was the ruin of a great civilization. [00:07:21] And that is the tagline of the movie. [00:07:23] But it's not on a lot of the posters. It was only on one of the posters. So I kind of had to dig to find that because I'm like, okay, I have a tagline that I interrogate movies for their plot and content, and a lot of movies have taglines. So I'm like, okay, what is Wildwood's tagline and why does that matter? [00:07:38] It's because the Ivy is a major character in this movie. Now, how is Ivy a character that you would only have to understand by watching the movie? [00:07:49] But this is Prue's adventure to get her little brother back after he was taken away from her. Now, mind you, she was not even supposed to take him on any sort of adventure, much less an adventure like this. [00:08:03] And basically the entire movie is her trying to rescue her brother and bring him home. But it's not that simple. It's never that simple. [00:08:13] Now, would that have been a really quick movie if that's all there was to it? Mm. But she, along the way, she meets a lot of new friends and she meets people who kind of get in the way and make things more difficult for her. [00:08:24] And Alexandra is not the most innocent person that you might think that she would be. There's a lot more to this story and it goes into a lot of very triggering instances for people. [00:08:40] There are things of suicide. There's references of suicide, there's references of self harm, which I mean alone. [00:08:49] And the violence in this movie is this is not the story and the violence and just the tone and content of this movie. This is not a children's movie. [00:09:01] Do you want to take your children to this? That's up to you. But this is definitely not the kids movie that is played out to be. Yes, it's PG rated. Rated PG 13. [00:09:11] But a lot of times those movies are still safe for younger audiences. And this is not one of those by far. [00:09:18] I was just really amazed at the depth of what this movie touches on now right from the beginning of this movie. In the first few minutes of this movie, the family is discuss. The. The father and father are having a talk with Pru and Mac, and they're talking about Mac. And like I said, and this is in the first few minutes of the movie, they're talking about pronouns. They're talking about Mac's future partner one day, whether it be a he, she, or they. [00:09:46] That kind of gives you a little bit of direction where this movie is going. Plus, it's set in Portland, Oregon. Not that I'm too surprised with that direction of the movie. [00:09:54] I was just really surprised that the Laika, the company that did this movie, took it as far as they did. Now, what am I referring to? Well, like I said, the movie is all about her traveling and rescuing her brother in the wildwood in the. In this forest. And it's just the forest is called the. I took it in my notes here. [00:10:18] It's. [00:10:19] It's not that even that's important at the moment, the name of the forest, but it's basically this forbidden forest they're not supposed to go into. But the movie is. Okay. As I'm watching this, I'm getting. I kind of get the feels. It's like, okay, it's a little bit of this, a little bit of this. [00:10:33] The movie, the story itself is not original in any way, shape or form, but the combination in which they did it for from. I have to at least give some credit for originality on that. But you have a little bit of Narnia, a little bit of Beauty and the Beast, a little bit of Labyrinth, a little bit of Avatar, and then just some mixture in of like the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. [00:10:55] Now you're like, what are you talking about it? The movie has nothing to do with that. [00:11:01] Not exactly. But you're going to see ref, if you go to watch this or. I mean, that's completely up to you, but if you see this, you're going to see references of each of these movies at different parts. From, like the Narnia, you have the Queen stuff that's there, and she's trying to do all this. And there's even references and stuff to Aslan and stuff like that. Not directly. Not directly. [00:11:20] Then you have the Beauty and the Beast and those. I'm not gonna say what that is because that would be a major spoiler of the movie Labyrinth Obviously the girl traveling into where her brother was kidnapped and trying to rescue him and bring him home. What movie does that sound like? [00:11:34] And then Avatar again, that's a little hard to describe without completely, like, good giving spoilers, which, you know, I just won't do. [00:11:43] And then there's quite a few battle scenes that you see, and those are very reminiscent of like, the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. [00:11:50] So all of that together, it sounds like a pretty amazing movie, right? [00:11:54] All those movies were either excellent or spectacular on numerous different things. [00:12:01] So what is with Wildwood? [00:12:04] Here is where the thing kind of really draws a line in the sand. [00:12:11] And like I said, I went back to rewatch it just because I'm like, okay, am I being fair to this? What am I not understanding here? Or am I just reading too much into this? [00:12:22] And unfortunately, after watching it a second time, I'm just like going, wow. It's like it almost further cemented ideas and I caught things I didn't even catch the first time around, which, I mean, it's kind of normal if you. If you watch a movie over and over and over again, you're going to catch things that you didn't catch the first time or the second time, etc. [00:12:43] But the main things of this movie, and I'm going to touch on these each individually here, it touches on the environmentalism. It's very much. [00:12:54] Use your imagination on that one, but it's very much anti authoritarianism, anti fascism. Okay. Which you might think is a good thing, but it's more of the modern term of what anti fascist is. [00:13:08] People really need to do their homework. People really need to do their own research and not listen to the media. [00:13:14] You'd be amazed. And what this is leaning towards is it almost feels like CNN was involved with the making of this movie. Is that a plus or a negative to you? For me, it's a negative by far. But don't worry, we're not even getting into the big things yet. [00:13:30] Indigenous displacement, it deals with the part of the movie is around the whole natives that were driven out of their homes. Hmm. [00:13:41] Collectivism. Might as well say socialism. I mean, there's a heavy influence of that in this movie. [00:13:47] It's got a very progressive family culture. I mean, listen to what I said about the pronouns in the first few minutes of the movie. Imagine thinking for your children. It's like, oh, here's my sweet little baby boy. Are you gonna marry a he, she or they? [00:14:00] Okay, Unless they. Doesn't count. Unless they're marrying multiple Multiple people, because I refuse to buy into the whole word they, they them is refers to multiple people and all the modern stuff, blah, blah, blah. But yeah, that's a whole different thing. Now here's the thing that I. [00:14:20] It does have very much diversity and inclusion throughout the thing. [00:14:24] And that could be either a plus or a minus in a movie because everybody deserves to be represented in some way, shape or form depending on the movie and depending who the target audience is. [00:14:34] This movie, even though it's PG13, is aimed at the younger crowd. This is not a movie that most adults are just gonna go see on their own. I mean, it's an animated movie. It's a little bit more of a grown up animated movie. It was done by the same ones who did Coraline, Paranorman, which I watched that one a bunch of times. I actually need to review that one of these days. But that's actually a really cute movie. [00:14:56] And it's just like I said, everybody deserves to have some representation. But it completely depends on the target audience of the movie. And this movie is done in such a way that it is targeted at that younger audience. [00:15:10] And in doing so it turning what should be a positive into a negative with the whole diversity and inclusion on that. Now it touches on the LGBTQ elemental P Alphabet soup on this a little bit. Just because there are some. [00:15:27] What appears to be a lesbian kiss during the movie. It talks about a couple androgynous characters that you can't completely tell, but I'm heavily leaning, see, they're two male or two female characters, something like that. Because there's that and then there's some other references to that throughout the. Throughout the whole story. Not constantly throughout, but just bits and pieces throughout. [00:15:50] And then there's very much political factionalism. [00:15:54] Now you're like, what in the world is that? [00:15:57] Well, here you have all of these different woods. You've got the Northwood, you've got the Southwood, you've got Wildwood, you've got these other areas. And they each have their own sex of people. [00:16:07] Not. Not sex, but S, E, C, T. So sex of people. And they're. They're all kind of in their own things. That's kind of where I'm bringing in like the Hobbit, Lord of the Rings references and stuff on that a little bit because they all come together for a particular fight as the movie progresses. And you know me, no spoilers. No spoilers or anything of that. [00:16:27] But you take all of that together and you think you've realized that this is a kids movie. Why are you putting all of this into a kids movie? This does not belong in a kids movie. If this movie was not made for kids, they should not have made it. So enticing for kids. [00:16:42] I guess I referenced all these other pieces to the story and okay, the kids movies. Narnia, obviously a kid's movie. Beauty and the Beast, obviously a kids movie. Labyrinth, it was aimed at maybe a little bit older crowd, but it ended up being a kids movie. Avatar, kids movie. Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, at least preteen movie. I mean, you're talking all these different movies I'm referencing, and they're all these amazing movies and they're. They take inspirations from all of these in Wildwood. So you're thinking, okay, this is going to be a great movie. This is going to be just this adventure through this whole thing. [00:17:22] But the message competes with the storytelling. You can't take all these different elements of all of this wokeism and put it into a story like this. The movie struggles with its own potential. I'm actually just reading some of my notes here because I was taking so many notes, I knew I would end up forgetting something if I didn't reference them. [00:17:39] But I mean, there's. There's some plot and continuity issues. There's some questionable things with some of the magic that's happening on the screen was just some of the story with the Ivy. [00:17:50] There's just some things that you're just left wondering questions that they don't answer entire things that they skip over. [00:17:57] Now there's gonna be people that come out of this movie thinking it's exceptional because all they're seeing is just the baseline of the story. But they're not digging deeper into the nuances. Now, should everybody dig deeper into the nuances? No. But this is gonna influence people. This is gonna influence thinkers, this is gonna influence ideas. [00:18:16] Because the movies that mean the most to us, they sink in and they affect us. [00:18:21] And when you have a movie that is indoctrinated with this many wokeisms, you can't help but, I mean, be catapulted into the chaos with all that. [00:18:35] So you might be wondering, okay, so where did you come in with your score on this one? [00:18:43] This one was honestly an easy score for me. I. I sat down, I looked at my rating scale, and I'm going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth on this one. [00:18:52] But Wildwood is coming in at just a 3.5 out of 10 on the Deputy scale. [00:18:58] Like, if you really must see this. [00:19:01] It should be in a, in a situation, in an area, especially if you're going to watch this with the younger audience, whether it be kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, et cetera. [00:19:11] It should be in an environment where you can go, hey, let's pause this. Let's talk about what's going on on the screen here. [00:19:16] Because if you really want to watch this, there's. There's so many things going on here and there's so many things that are so intense for a younger audience. [00:19:25] Not just the content that I'm referring to, but I mean the content of the story. [00:19:29] There are, like I said, there are those other things dealing with the suicide and self harm that are. [00:19:36] It's a heaviness throughout the movie and it's a heaviness that you take away from this movie. [00:19:43] And I just think people should be aware. I wouldn't call it a warning as per se, but I want to interrogate this movie fully for the plot and the content to help you decide if this is a movie that you want to spend the money and the time watching. [00:20:01] And I hope that this has helped. [00:20:03] If it has, or even if you don't agree with me, I hope that you can see enough variety in the movies and the movie reviews that I bring to you that you, like, subscribe and turn on that notification bell. Because when I really dig deep into movies like this, I want to fully interrogate them. Like hold the whole flashlight in the face. [00:20:23] Not literally, but looking at the plot and the content. I'm not focusing on all of the Hollywood gobbledygook on this stuff because it's just not what I typically do. Now, is this movie visually beautiful? Absolutely. But again, that's not what I focus on. I focus on the parts that I think matter the most to you. And I hope that this helps. But until later, guys, I will be back again soon. Bye.