In the first lockdown, I read Be Nice by Anabel Donald, a gender-swapped retelling of Lord of the Flies. I was left rather disappointed by it, despite the interesting concept. I was therefore delighted to watch Amazon Prime’s The Wilds over the holidays, which does justice to this premise.
Both The Wilds and Be Nice start with a plane crash, prematurely ending a journey to an all-women retreat. However, they unfold rather differently. Be Nice stays fairly loyal to the plot of Lord of the Flies, and has parallels to several of its characters, whereas The Wilds takes far more liberties on both counts, making it more refreshing and engaging. Be Nice makes interesting commentary on consumerism and the impact of media (social and otherwise) in the way it centres beauty standards as the main cause of conflict in a rather Mean Girls fashion. However, this was one of the main sources of disappointment for me, as although these are interesting topics of discussion, they did not make a good mix with a Lord of the Flies setting. I feel as though examining teenage female hierarchy under this lens only serves to further the notion that women lack the depth of men, being capable only of mere pettiness. Indeed, there is no portrayal of significant psychological decline in Be Nice.
The Wilds, on the other hand, digs a lot deeper into the psyches of its female characters. It is revealed at the end of the first episode that the girls have been stranded on the island for a social experiment, in which an academic seeks to prove that women are inherently more capable of nonviolent government than men. (Even a non-scientist such as myself could point out the terrible flaws in this methodology, but I digress.) The Wilds already does one better than Be Nice by acknowledging that women are capable of violence, depicting the girls fighting and hunting for food. It is not, however, a gratuitous violence fest, and accompanies the occasional violence with psychological nuance. It also focuses more on the girls’ survival methods than Be Nice, providing more compelling and accurate conflict. The dwindling hope of rescue, hunger, and injury take their toll on all the girls, and some are additionally plagued by paranoia about the nature of their circumstances. Suspicion and accusations of fishy behaviour are far more interesting causes of conflict than the squabbles over clothes in Be Nice.
As well as having more depth than Be Nice, The Wilds is infinitely more successful in its storytelling. Be Nice is told from the first person perspective of several characters. While this can be a good way to give a vivid impression of several characters, the book is far too short to carry this off effectively, instead being confusing. On the other hand, The Wilds deals with multiple perspectives and three different timelines very coherently. With ten hour-long episodes, it has plenty of time to properly develop several characters, and devotes an episode to each main character, which makes for a clearer narrative than the stichomythic character switching of Be Nice. In each episode of the Wilds, a character is interrogated by psychologists who ask about both what happened on the island, and what their life was like before the island. The flashbacks to the girls’ prior lives develop the characters nicely (and deal with the issues afflicting modern teenage girls in far more detail than Be Nice). The accounts of the events of the island are told from several different perspectives, but are kept in chronological order from episode to episode, allowing the three separate timelines to be cohesive and easy to follow. There are also intermittent showings of what is happening behind the scenes of the experiment. Information is revealed at a good pace; the viewer is kept guessing enough for intrigue to persist throughout the entire season, but questions are answered often enough that there are never too many loose threads at any one time.
Be Nice is worth a read if you fancy a quick book that explores interesting topics without being heavy. I would, however, wholeheartedly recommend The Wilds (as do a few other members of the Unconquered Peaks team), as it is full of depth and nuance, and ultimately addictive and exciting.
