A vastly underrated historical epic braves a perilous trek across the streaming wasteland

Following the boom period that ignited in the wake of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, the historical epic was everywhere you looked for a good few years, but dwindling critical and commercial returns eventually saw the craze peter out. As a result, several unheralded gems have come and gone, with Albert Hughes’ Alpha one of the most notable.

It was far from being a box office disaster, in fairness, but a tally of just under $100 million in ticket sales against production costs estimated to be around $50 million ensured it wasn’t a runaway success, either. Not even a Certified Fresh approval rating of 80 percent on Rotten Tomatoes was enough to guarantee it found legs in the multiplex, but it’s since become a regular performer on streaming.

The old-fashioned adventure finds Kodi Smit-McPhee’s Keda abandoned and left for dead after the first hunt with his tribe goes disastrously wrong. Fortunately for the youngster, he stumbles across a lone wolf and they soon become inseparable as they embark on a dangerous and decidedly risky trek across prehistoric wastelands in order to get back to their own kind.

Light on dialogue but heavy on ambition, Alpha boasts plenty of stunning visuals and an engaging central performance that finds Smit-McPhee doing a fantastic job of anchoring a breezy 96-minute thrill-ride almost entirely on his own. Embarking on its latest resurgence, FlixPatrol has revealed the movie to be one of the most-watched features on both iTunes and ViaPlay this week, not that it should be a shock given the genre’s ongoing popularity among at-home audiences.