Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Ricky Baker is a rebellious city kid with a history of trouble who is placed with a rural foster family in the New Zealand countryside: the warm Bella, her gruff husband Hec, and their dog. When a tragedy disrupts the arrangement and Ricky faces being moved again, he runs off into the bush, and Hec follows after him. A child welfare worker named Paula becomes convinced that Hec has gone off the rails and taken the boy, setting off a nationwide manhunt that forces the mismatched pair to depend on each other to survive in the wilderness.

Taika Waititi directed and wrote the screenplay, and produced it with Leanne Saunders and Matt Noonan. It followed his second and third features, the 2010 film Boy and the 2014 film What We Do in the Shadows. Sam Neill plays Hec and Julian Dennison plays Ricky, with Rima Te Wiata as Bella, Rachel House as Paula, and Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne and Oscar Kightley among the cast of 25.

The film was released in 2016 and runs 101 minutes. It was made for about 3 million dollars and took roughly 21 million dollars worldwide, a strong return on a modest production. On IMDb it holds 7.8 out of 10 from around 152,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 7.6 from roughly 2,400 votes. A film critics' rating of 7.9 from 208 reviews places it in line with how audiences received it.