Plot
Faced with her father's fading health and environmental changes that release an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs, six-year-old Hushpuppy leaves her Delta-community home in search of her mother.
Release Year: 2012
Rating: 6.9/10 (446 voted)
Critic's Score: 98/100
Director:
Benh Zeitlin
Stars: Quvenzhané Wallis, Dwight Henry, Levy Easterly
Storyline Hushpuppy, an intrepid six-year-old girl, lives with her father, Wink, in "the Bathtub," a southern Delta community at the edge of the world. Wink's tough love prepares her for the unraveling of the universe; for a time when he's no longer there to protect her. When Wink contracts a mysterious illness, nature flies out of whack-temperatures rise, and the ice caps melt, unleashing an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs. With the waters rising, the aurochs coming, and Wink's health fading, Hushpuppy goes in search of her lost mother.
Writers: Lucy Alibar, Benh Zeitlin
Cast: Quvenzhané Wallis
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Hushpuppy
Dwight Henry
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Wink
Levy Easterly
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Jean Battiste
Lowell Landes
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Walrus
Pamela Harper
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Little Jo
Gina Montana
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Miss Bathsheeba
Amber Henry
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LZA
Jonshel Alexander
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Joy Strong
Nicholas Clark
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Boy with Bell
Joseph Brown
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Winston
Henry D. Coleman
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Peter T
Kaliana Brower
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T-Lou
Philip Lawrence
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Dr. Maloney
Hannah Holby
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Open Arms Babysitter
Jimmy Lee Moore
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Sgt. Major
Trivia:
The movie was financed by New York-based nonprofit 'Cinereach [us]', and forms the first feature-length project for 'Court 13 Pictures [us]'.
Quotes: Hushpuppy:
Strong animals know when your hearts are weak.
User Review
I feel like I got fooled by the positive reviews
Rating:
Beasts of the Southern Wild, like quite a few other American horror
films, had an unresolved ending and an eskewed sense of logic.
Considering a horror film about "Beasts of the Southern Wild"/beasties
of all things makes one wonder what the film is like. How do they make
dinos scary? That is what I thought when I got this film.
However, the answer, in this case at least, is they can't. The
prehistoric creatures called aurochs were easy to push away and tear
apart even for the heroine, Hushpuppy, and they never once did anything
that really showed any power to fear. In short, the monsters of the
show were very weak. Excessively so.
The main villain, a psychotically obsessive woman who killed herself,
is mostly an evil spirit who can make Hushpuppy have nightmares, taunts
her inside the house, and who later becomes re-born as a scarecrow and
dies in a blaze of laughing mania. A possible high point of the story,
and the scene that reveals that Miss Bathsheeba was dead and why she
died, ends up less than scary and more or less creepy. The woman was
pathetically obsessed and completely manic in her childish flaunts of
over-dramatic and emo-tistic emotion. This woman has problems,
obviously.
In fact, it's safe to say that all of the characters involved in this
story had some sort of problem. Hushpuppy had her incessant and obvious
brother complex, Sally and LZA 's parents were obsessed with using
scarecrows, and Jean Battiste was... insane. Little Jo was probably the
least "humanized" of all the characters. Between Wink and Hushpuppy, he
seemed more of an object to be taken. Poor guy.
All in all, this movie wasn't frightening even in the nightmare, diary,
and dino/escape sequences like it possibly could have been. It was
unbelievable in both story and in how poorly it was done. If you're
looking for a good horror to give you a scare or even challenge your
mind, this is not it.
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