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Poster for Beasts of the Southern Wild

Beasts of the Southern Wild

I gotta take care of mine.

2012 · 1h 33m · PG-13 Drama, Fantasy
Directed by Benh Zeitlin

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Overview

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.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
87%
Tomatometer
Fresh

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.

Stanley Kauffmann, The New Republic
Fresh

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.

Christy Lemire, Associated Press
Fresh

A dreamy but strikingly immediate and frayed-at-the-edges, child's-eye view of life on the margins of America.

Dave Calhoun, Time Out
Fresh

A beautiful, strange tone poem about childhood and innocence.

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald
Fresh

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.

Tom Long, Detroit News

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