THE WILDMAN OF SHAGGY CREEK

If your kids are old enough to handle a good scare, this is a worthwhile family adventure. It's built on the kind of small-town, backyard-forest mystery that used to be a staple of family filmmaking — a new kid, a spooky legend, a dare nobody should have taken. And underneath the scares, it has something real to say: about courage, about hospitality, and especially about how cruelty toward a sibling or a new kid should never go unanswered.

It does earn its scares. The night in the woods brings genuine tension, screaming, and a boy pulling a knife to defend himself and a friend — nothing graphic, but enough that younger children may be frightened rather than thrilled.

For older kids and the adults watching with them, though, this is a solid pick: a story where an enemy becomes a friend, and where the lesson lands without being preachy. Bottom line: worth the trip, once your child is old enough not to lose sleep over it.

Scott isn't happy. His family has just moved to a new state for his mom's job, and he's left his friends and his bike behind. Their new backyard sits against a small, dense forest — and Scott starts hearing things he can't explain, and feeling like something in those woods is watching him.

Then he meets Haley and her older brother, Zach, who tell him about a Bigfoot said to haunt the woods — and a boy who vanished there ten years ago. When Zach's teasing gets out of hand, Scott makes him an offer he probably shouldn't: one night, alone, in those woods.

Three stars puts this comfortably in "good family entertainment" territory — well short of a classic, but genuinely worth your evening. The child actors, especially Hudson Hensley and Ayla Bullington as Scott and Haley, carry the story capably, and the film is described as spirited and engaging even as it leans into real scares for its target age group.

There isn't much here in the way of visual spectacle or directorial flourish to point to — this is a modest, story-first family film, not a showcase of craft. What it does well is tonal: it holds the line between "fun scary" and "too much," mostly succeeding, with the caveat that younger viewers may find it more the latter than the former.

This is a film built on a strong moral spine, and it shows it plainly rather than hiding it. It stresses family, courage, hospitality, and the duty to help and protect others. Its clearest, most emphatic message is against teasing — Zach's relentless cruelty toward his sister and Scott is treated as a real wrong, rebuked rather than shrugged off, and the story's arc bends toward reconciliation: two people who start as enemies end as friends.

There's nothing here that works against a biblical view of how people ought to treat each other — cruelty is named as cruelty, courage is rewarded, and a stranger is welcomed rather than excluded. The one wrinkle worth naming for parents: Scott disobeys his parents to spend the night in the woods, and the film doesn't spend much time reckoning with that choice on its own terms, even as it lets the larger moral lesson land.

At its heart, this is a story about turning an enemy into a friend — which is a very old, very Christian idea. "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you" (Luke 6:27) is a harder command than any Bigfoot story can fully carry, but it's the same direction this film is pointing.

This is a small, sincere family film with a clear conscience: it wants your kids to be braver, kinder, and quicker to make peace with an enemy than to keep a grudge. It earns its scares honestly, and it earns its lesson, too. For families with older children, our verdict stands: worth the trip — older children and up.