Film Review: Beasts of the Southern Wild

Director: Benh Zeitlin

In a Bayou community called 'the bathtub', we find our setting that appears to be off the coast of Louisiana and the levee. A surreal world is created featuring Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) who is 6 years old and her Dad who is called Wink (Dwight Henry), there world is all changed when the polar ice-caps begin to melt during a storm which means that their entire village is washed away. They stubbornly resist being placed in a shelter home as they try and maintain their way of life.

Dwight Henry owned a bakery and deli before this movie and had never aspired to be an actor but got involved after many of the producers used to visit his deli regularly. Unfortunately you can tell he isn't an actor as his passion is often misplaced and over the top, he is familiar with the subject matter having been involved in Hurricane Katrina. Whilst Quvenzhané Wallis performance as the young naive Hushpuppy is impressive, it certainly isn't worthy of the excessive praise being lavished in the media.

Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) and Wink (Dwight Henry)

Sometimes it's hard watching the film that is half surreal and half real, you feel you get handle on the film and then it does something quite unexplainable within its own world. The plot has scarcely enough material to cover an hour which means that it feels like a long drawn out movie despite a run time of approx 90mins. It is clearly a film inspired from the events of Hurricane Katrina and the fact that the people in the region had their way of life taken from them by not only the storm but by the local authorities too. But it largely runs out of ideas in the second part especially during a bizarre scene at a local brothel where the children dance and play with the woman.

1/4 lacked the magic it promised and suffers from a lack of direction in the plot