Overall, Beasts of the Southern Wild contains undeniable vision and ambition, even if the emotional clarity feels perhaps too certain for a child in the abstract world on display.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 20, 2022

“Beasts” grabbed me and carried me through the full gamut of emotions so effectively that even when I was being manipulated I just didn’t care. There is so much heart and feeling that saturates this film.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 19, 2022

"Beasts of the Southern Wild" is a vibrant, moving testament to the world's interconnectedness. It is also one of cinema's most difficult, hardest-won coming-of-age stories, which makes that even more impressive.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Jun 2, 2022

Beasts of the Southern Wild takes the tone of its opening jubilation and stretches it out for the entire duration creating an incomparable cinematic experience that captures the imagination in the best way possible.

| Feb 11, 2022

Beasts wants us to emotionally connect to what basically consist of a bunch of bizarrely ennobled child abusers in a way I was never entirely able to

| Jul 2, 2021

Though Hushpuppy's world may not last for long, she and her people continue to live, and thrive, and leave their stamp on it. Beasts of the Southern Wild is about embracing that attitude.

| Mar 10, 2021

Wallis' performance is commendable, showcasing a young actress who convincingly embodies the distraught, innocent, immature, and yet enduring mindset of a child in peril.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Dec 1, 2020

There are so many scenes in Beasts of the Southern Wild that work magnificently.

| Original Score: 4.0/4.0 | Sep 2, 2020

In Benh Zeitlin's audacious post-Katrina, African American folk story, a female Huck Finn fights to survive the storm with a grouchy, drunken, difficult daddy.

| Jun 19, 2020

The brilliant, original four-hankie dystopian family drama from New Orleans newcomer Benh Zeitlin far surpassed any expectations for a scruffy $1.5 million effort from an unknown film collective...

| Mar 31, 2020

A monumentally original fable.

| Feb 28, 2020

"Southern Wild" is a hypnotic bit of cinematic poetry that is as vivid as its lead character's imagination.

| Apr 11, 2019

Beasts [of the Southern Wild] has the contradictory, inevitable, glorious feel of a myth, a folk tale about a place that never was but is everywhere, in a time that's entirely now and could have been decades ago.

| Feb 27, 2019

The movie's mad gusto is truly infectious.

| Feb 22, 2019

Like some wonderful kind of live-action Studio Ghibli effort that has somehow found its way across the Pacific and onto America's ravaged, weather-beaten doorstep.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 5, 2019

[Beasts of the Southern Wild] brings a way of life into focus, albeit through the repeated use of the shaky cam.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 29, 2018

The movie gave us something big and real... the sense of forced uplift I got from the swelling music and pushy voice-over actually does reflect how a child thinks and responds to tragedy.

| Aug 7, 2018

This beautiful film, anchored by non-professional actors inside of a wrecked world, is one of the most wrenchingly wonderful fantasies of 2012.

| Jul 3, 2018

The film is such a convincing, fully realized, and overpowering achievement that begrudging its popular and artistic success is feckless.

| Apr 30, 2018

Amongst the giants this year, this film by first-time director Benh Zeitlin can be overlooked. But without it, true fantasy is lost.

| Original Score: A- | Jan 26, 2018