The movie is about Hushpuppy, six, with her father, Wink. One day, when her father suddenly suffers from illness, this girl seems to be waking up to the presence of fierce prehistoric creatures from her frozen graves to come across the planet. Now, Hushpuppy must learn methods of courage and love in order to get over things.
As Wink, Hushpuppy's father, Dwight Henry is one of the greatest finds in Hollywood in years. Henry shows a depth and range that made actors like Denzel Washington so great.
Beasts of the Southern Wild is sheer poetry on screen: an explosion of joy in the midst of startling squalor and one of the most visceral, original films to come along in a while.
Philadelphia Weekly
May 03, 2015
It plays like Days of Heaven by way of The Road Warrior.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
July 19, 2012
"Beasts of the Southern Wild" is a film to get lost in.
The atmosphere Zeitlin develops here is moist with promise and danger, and he moves back and forth between outright fable and pungent reality with an astounding sureness of vision for a first-time director.
Hushpuppy, a six-year-old with no superpowers, no great destiny, not even much by way of contact with the outside world, is a more active female protagonist than 99% of [Hollywood heroines].
What is also extraordinary is that almost all the people we see are actors. So this is not a documentary but a moving enactment by people who are themselves moved.
