All the Wilderness movie review (2015)

Turns out, however, that James Charm is not so much enchanted as he is haunted. His father’s untimely demise, the cause of which we don’t learn until much (maybe too much) later, has left his child obsessed with death to a highly morbid degree. In fact, there probably hasn’t been a movie kid this fixated on the Grim Reaper’s handiwork since Bud Cort’s title kook in 1971’s “Harold and Maude.” 

As played by Kodi Smit-McFee, who has apparently inherited Haley Joel Osment’s mantle as Hollywood’s spooked-out child actor of choice after his stints in the post-apocalyptic fable “The Road” and the vampire thriller “Let Me In,” James doesn’t so much see dead people than think he can predict when death will strike. He ends up with a shiner after handing a note to a bully that states the exact time and day he will expire. He also senses that his hamster is not long for this world and, it turns out, he is right.

James, who has been accepted at a school for gifted students, has exceedingly sophisticated taste in music (Chopin piano concertos on vinyl) and reading material (“Moby Dick” and Carl Sandberg’s poetry, especially the one aptly titled “Wilderness”). Something about him—along with the repeated image of a verdant canopy of majestic ferns, pines and trees that would do Terrence Malick proud—makes you believe he might be special. A gangly wilted plant that is surely destined to sprout into something better.

But instead of being the second coming of Edgar Allan Poe, James proves to be not much more than just another Holden Caulfield knockoff.

Still, for a while at least, Smit-McFee is gifted and vulnerable enough to convince us that there must be more going on with this moody social misfit than debut director/writer Michael Johnson’s slight screenplay is ever capable of conveying. But James is simply a lost boy hoping to be found and yearning for acceptance as he decides to escape from his suburban home to sample the urban wilderness of Portland, Oregon, which is portrayed as a nocturnal carnival awash with garishly murky green, red and blue hues.