Synopsis
Where the Wild things Are is one of those movies which is full of sound and fury, but otherwise doesn't seem to make any sense. The premise of the film concerns an emotionally troubled child who lives with his divorced mother and his teenage sister. Max is lonely, insecure, aggressive, and escapist. He likes to hide in blanket forts, in snow igloos, and other enclosures. He likes to terrorize his dog, to wear animal pajamas, to roar like a lion, and to attack his sister's guy friends with snowballs. Max kicks fences, tears things, and when he isn't acting out his frustration, he is asking for attention.

Max is a mess. He resents the attention his mother is giving to her date and ends up biting her so hard on the shoulder that she is both hurt and surprised by his intention to cause her harm. He runs away from home, goes out to sea, and sails to an island where certain wild things live. The wild things are extremely powerful and destructive, although they never hurt Max physically. He tries to be their "king" and to rule them, but he is unsuccessful and ends up making the monster family even more dysfunctional then it was before. Max, when acting emotionally, is a real monster who hurts even other monsters. Metaphorically speaking, the monsters are emotions.

Freud
The viewer at this point begins to see the connection between emotions and disorder. Max is a bundle of raging desires. His mother yells at him that he's "out of control" just as Max yells at one of the wild things that it's "out of control." The problem is that there is nothing to ameliorate the desires. Max's desires, his "wild things," reside in the id which, according to Freudian psychology, is the child-like part of the unconscious. The id is driven by the "pleasure principle" which seeks to gratify all of its desires every moment. Max’s life is an unbounded pursuit of pleasure, of avoidance, of repression, of denial, of regression. But even when he's running away from home and from his mother, he gets pleasure from the act. The divorced father (the superego) is not there to keep Max (the id) in place. The mediating influence of the mother (the ego) is insufficient to control Max. Where the "wild things are" is where Max is: in the id, the island in the unconscious of the sea.  

A Story that Cannot End Well
In its plot, the book (1963) is very similar to The Lord of the Flies (1954). Both works feature absent father figures (the superegos), both have ineffective mother figures acting as egos (Ralph in the novel), both feature the wild desires (id) of boyhood, and both take place on an island (the unconscious). In Golding's novel, order is restored when the adult men find the boys. However, in this movie, Max returns to a home without a father. In other words, from a Freudian perspective, this story cannot end well. There is no superego to control the id (the child) and to protect the ego (the mother). Max is having Oedipal conflicts (resenting the boyfriend) which express themselves in aggression toward his mother. This archetypal drama is also acted out by a wild thing who creates breast-shaped, miniature mountains and then destroys them. The giant womb the wild things create also becomes unsafe for Max. Ultimately, the most powerful wild thing threatens to "eat" (consume) Max and Max has to escape the dangerous realm of the id (unbridled emotions) and return to the sane realm of the ego: home and mom.

The Monster Lives On
In the creepy ending, Max smiles at the sleeping face of his mother. The smile might be affectionate, but my take is that it's mischievous because the viewer knows the mother cannot control Max who has already bitten her once. Max didn't apologize for biting her and the expectation is that Max will go on being a monster, feeding off the security the ego provides. The movie ends with him in his monster pajamas, eating and waiting for her to awaken.  

Since there has been no repentance expressed by Max, the viewer expects that the cycle of irrational and unfettered behavior will resume all over again. The irony is that Where the Wild things Are is a cuddly monster movie for children and a psychological horror film for adults in the tradition of The Bad Seed (1956), another Freudian-themed film. Every parent should see it and immediately go home and spank their child on principle (metaphorically speaking). The movie is a perfect illustration of how liberal child-raising (reasoning with emotions) causes a child to become frustrated, aggressive, and demanding because the child cannot control its own emotions. When the parent tries to talk the child into controlling its own emotions, this only exasperates the child because it sees the parent as withholding that which would make the child happy.  

Object Lesson in How Not to Raise Children
When parents help children to control their emotions through discipline, children acquire peace in the structured home life that the discipline provides. They have higher self-esteem; they are less likely to have anger issues; they develop a balanced personality that they can "drive" rather than be driven by. Only when children are given structure can they find rest from the wild thing that is in them. As a form of entertainment, I don't recommend the movie only because it's an emotional onslaught with no narrative depth. As an object lesson in how not to raise children, it's invaluable.

Rating
Where the Wild things Are is rated PG for mild thematic elements, some adventure action and brief language.

Michael Karounos is an assistant professor of English at Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville. He has a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in Victorian literature and has published papers in "Studies in English Literature," the "Age of Johnson," "The Robert Frost Review," and in "Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries." Michael blogs at BlueCollarProf.com.