Parental difference of opinion is put to the test throughout. And there's a significant twist at the end that takes this 20,000-year-old story smack into the #MeToo moment.

It's not so much a performance from Smit-Mcphee as a totally credible and unselfconscious demonstration of what it would be like to fight for your life against hunger and exposure

It is difficult not to be impressed by much of what does arrive on screen.

The film takes on a plastic, almost sterile feel, and the rugged landscape is less of a character, where it needs to be the center of the movie, especially since Alpha is in serious need of some star power