There’s nothing especially big or clever about the film-making of this documentary, which is a bit scrappy in places and frustratingly oblique in its commitment to its vérité, let-the-story-tell-itself aesthetic. But director Crystal Moselle unquestionably deserves full credit for spotting that the Angulo family – a clan of seven children, now mostly fully grown, who spent more than 20 years holed up in a New York City apartment, virtually prisoners of their controlling father – were a fascinating subject for a film.
They were home-schooled mostly by their mother, and allowed outside only on rare occasions. But the kids were allowed to watch a broad spectrum of movies by their film-buff dad, inspiring them to spend hours making props and typing out the scripts of their favourites, to stage their own delightful versions. Too many questions are ultimately left unanswered, but it’s a real kick to see them turn out all right in the end, out and about, and joyfully discovering, to quote Louis MacNeice, how “the world is crazier and more of it than we think”.
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