The Wild Man of the Navidad (2008)
"History tells one story. Truth tells another."
Not Rated / Color / 86 Minutes

WARNING: THIS CAPSULE REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!

It is always tough for me to review independent films, if only because I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Making a film is a huge undertaking, especially if you're serious about doing it right, and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears go into every low budget production. For that reason, many indie film makers feel strongly about their work and tend to get touchy if someone like myself gives their movie a thumbs down.

That's why I'm apologizing ahead of time to Justin Meeks and Duane Graves because I didn't much care for Wildman of the Navidad. In fact, this has to be one of the worst movies I've seen in quite a while, which is odd because it totally succeeds on a technical level. It is filmed and edited expertly, but everything else is pretty much sub-par.

"Go ahead punk. Make my day... hunt!"

Wildman is based off the memoirs of a one Dale S. Rogers who claims to have had encounters with the legendary "wild man" of Sublime, Texas back in the 1970s. In the film, Dale is portrayed by co-director / writer / producer Justin Meeks, as a quiet and misunderstood man who doesn't quite seem to fit in with the rest of the local redneck population.

Dale lives in a secluded ranch house with his disabled wife Jean, and a Mexican named Mario who acts as a caretaker for the married couple, and we soon discover that they have an extremely odd nightly ritual: Every night at nine p.m., Dale puts a skinned rabbit out on his front doorstep as a sort of sacrificial offering to some unnamed terror.

Apparently this has been a "family thing" for several generations, and the existence of some strange creature on Dale's property has gone largely unnoticed. That all changes once Dale loses his job to a jerk named Karl Crabtree. In desperate need of money for his wife's medication, Dale begins leasing out his land to local hunters.

This plan backfires, after Karl goes hunting on Dale's land and drunkenly fires at, and wounds, the mysterious wild man. (Yeah, that's right. Not only does this a-hole steal Dale's job, but he incites the bloody wrath of a mighty irritable man-beast!) From this point on, the once skittish wild man becomes extremely aggressive, and begins slaying anyone who wanders into its territory.

This is how rednecks teach their kids about the birds and the bees.

Dale quickly realizes that he's sending people to their certain deaths, but he keeps leasing out his land anyway, particularly because he's trying to make a better life for his ailing spouse. Dale obviously feels guilty about all that has happened, but there's never an emotionally charged moment where he comes to grips with it all.

Oddly enough, it's Mario, the despicable caretaker that greedily (and sometimes violently) molests poor Jean Rogers, that acts as Dale's conscience most of the time. Good ole Mario pleads with Dale to stop letting people hunt on the land because the "dark evil one" is not pleased. (Boy this guy has balls. He berates poor Dale for sending innocent souls to their deaths, then turns around and fondles and/or beats Dale's crippled wife!)

Eventually, the local populace begins to notice that some of their fellow hillbillies have gone missing, and after a night-long rampage by the wild man, they form a posse and venture onto Dale's lands to hunt down the creature. With Sheriff Lyle Pierce in the lead, they head into the unknown, armed with shotguns and moonshine.

The Wild Man's personal ad - "Likes: Murdering sex offenders and taking long walks along the swampy banks of the Navidad in the moonlight."

The drunken mob manages to drive the wild man out of hiding, and chase it towards the Navidad River. The fleeing man-beast escapes from his pursuers after crossing the river (which is more like a small stream really), but then it suddenly stops dead and stares at something off camera.

Seconds later, the vicious wild man is gunned down by none other than Dale Rogers. Its body is then unceremoniously hung in center of town and (according to some text at the end of the film) buried soon after, along with its victims, and the "truth" of its existence.

As I said earlier, The Wild Man of the Navidad is great on a technical level; everything from the cinematography, to the editing, to the lighting is done exceptionally well. Sadly, the rest of the film is a complete mess.

The first problem is that the bulk of the cast is made up of the citizenry of various Texan towns; most of them can't act, and half as many can't seem to speak English intelligibly. I know that the film makers were working with a limited budget, but having a few talented actors could have helped this movie tremendously.

"Dislikes: Liquored-up hicks with shotguns."

Problem two is the script; there are quite a few things that could have been fleshed out in order to give this film a little depth. In particular, I would have liked to learn more about Dale's family history with the wild man. And how about a little backstory on how Mario got hired, why he has a deep, religious fear of the wild man, and how he manages to get away with molesting a handicapped woman all the friggin' time, even when her husband is in the house?!

And would it have been too much to ask to actually write characters that were likeable? I didn't give a damn about anyone in this film, not even the little boy that gets mauled by the movie's resident monster. Usually I find at least one character to latch onto during the course of a film, but here I just wanted everyone to meet a horrible fate.

My third big issue with this movie is that its monster, or man-beast, or wild man, or whatever you want to call it, just plain sucks. I was expecting something like the Jersey Devil or Bigfoot, but instead got a poor man's version of ManBearPig! I don't mind that they don't have an origin for the creature, but damn it, what is it supposed to be?!

The Wild Piņata-Man of the Navidad!

When we see it through most of the movie, it's just a big guy covered in cowhides and animal pelts that utilizes "deer antler claw technology" to kill his victims. When we finally see the wild man unmasked, we still don't get a very good look at it; it appears to be a big ugly dude with tusks jutting out of his mouth.

Also, the directors show far too much of the creature early on in the film; they should have definitely taken the "less-is-more approach" here. It worked for Spielberg when he did JAWS and it certainly would have worked for this indie production.

The Wild Man of the Navidad just didn't click with me, but believe me when I tell you that I tried to like it. I watched this movie four times, and though I have gained some appreciation for what the directors tried to do (the film does successfully maintain the feel of an old 70's grindhouse flick), I couldn't derive any true enjoyment from it.

It is with a heavy heart that I "award" this directorial duo's first full-length independent feature with:


- ONE AND-A-HALF 'RADS' -

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