Beasts of the Southern Wild
Fox Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: June 27, 2012 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
86
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 45 Critic Reviews
Positive:
38
Mixed:
7
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeSep 1, 2020
There is a point to all this. As well as offering a delicious audio-visual feast, the film firmly makes the case that those who have least to blame for global warming — those living close to nature — will be the ones who ultimately suffer the most. If we have to be taught such a grim lesson then this is the way to do it. Read full review
100
EmpireDamon WiseOct 3, 2012
Beautiful, funny, timely and tender, this is the American arthouse movie of the year. Read full review
100
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallJul 25, 2012
Hushpuppy carries a lot of emotional weight on her slender shoulders, and Wallis makes one wish to climb into the screen to lighten the load with an embrace. Do not miss this performance, or this quietly astonishing, life-affirming masterpiece. Read full review
100
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezJul 20, 2012
It's a beautiful, strange tone poem about childhood and innocence, set in a strange but still recognizable world where the polar ice caps are melting, crayfish shacks float down rivers and enormous aurochs, an extinct breed of bison, are sloughing their way toward our tiny, adorable narrator. Read full review
100
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonJul 20, 2012
A cinematic miracle, a film that carves out a vivid space that has nothing to do with wizards or extraterrestrials, but quite a lot to say about the fantastical creatures that roam through the humanity in us all. Read full review
100
The New YorkerDavid DenbyJul 19, 2012
It's hard not to see Beasts as an expression of post-affluent America. And here's the surprise: the grinding Great Recession may never offer up a movie as happy, or as inspired by poetry and dream, as this one. [23 July 2012, p.80]
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyJul 13, 2012
Shot in Louisiana, with non-professional actors and apparently set-designed from a junkyard, Beasts of the Southern Wild marks one of the most auspicious American directorial debuts in years. Read full review
100
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaJul 12, 2012
Beasts of the Southern Wild transports us to places that are peculiar and dangerous and magical, and makes us feel weirdly at home. Read full review
100
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottJul 6, 2012
Beasts of the Southern Wild is not only a wonderful story -- a portrait of intestinal fortitude in the face of enormous change -- but it's our story, forged in our own shared recent history and dripping with flood, sweat and tears. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleAmy BiancolliJul 5, 2012
The film is its own beast, and it's a rare one. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeTy BurrJul 5, 2012
She's (Hushpuppy) trying to make sense of this world, and the movie, pitched between realism and fable, is the story of how she finally does. That balance is the key to the movie's magic. Read full review
100
Chicago ReaderJ.R. JonesJul 5, 2012
"The whole universe depends on everything fitting together just right," declares Hushpuppy, the fierce, nappy-headed girl at the center of this extraordinary southern gothic. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertJul 4, 2012
Sometime miraculous films come into being, made by people you've never heard of, starring unknown faces, blindsiding you with creative genius. Beasts of the Southern Wild is one of the year's best films. Read full review
100
New York PostLou LumenickJun 29, 2012
The best reason to wade into this (let's be honest) challenging but hugely rewarding film is Quvenzhané Wallis. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternJun 28, 2012
There's no trace of calculation, only artistic ambitions and hopes that have come to fruition in the year's finest film thus far. Read full review
100
Rolling StonePeter TraversJun 28, 2012
There's no way you won't be captivated by Wallis, chosen ahead of 3,500 candidates to play the tiny folk hero who narrates the story. Her performance in this deceptively small film is a towering achievement. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumJun 27, 2012
The movie is small, local, and idiosyncratic. Then again, it's also a thing of beauty and originality - and for that, sustained huzzahs are in order. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyJun 27, 2012
Director Benh Zeitlin and his co-writer Lucy Alibar, a playwright whose "Juicy and Delicious" was the inspiration, have created characters that are wondrously indelible, distinctive of voice and set them inside a story that will unleash a devastating hurricane, and a flood of emotions, before it is done. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottJun 26, 2012
This movie is a blast of sheer, improbable joy, a boisterous, thrilling action movie with a protagonist who can hold her own alongside Katniss Everdeen, Princess Merida and the other brave young heroines of 2012. Read full review
100
TimeRichard CorlissJun 22, 2012
Mark down the date: June 27. That's when American moviegoers will see this perfect storm of a film, and the tiny force of nature that is Quvenzhané Wallis. Read full review
100
VarietyPeter DebrugeJun 22, 2012
A stunning debut that finds its dandelion-haired heroine fighting rising tides and fantastic creatures in a mythic battle against modernity. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyJun 22, 2012
It's very much an art piece, to be sure, but it feels like a genuine one that, while meditated, speaks fluently and truly for the place, people and culture it so indelibly depicts. Read full review
91
Portland OregonianShawn LevyJul 12, 2012
Brings you into a world you didn't know existed with a closeness that the movies almost never achieve. If that constitutes exploitation, then it's a crime which all works of art should aspire to commit. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubNoel MurrayJun 22, 2012
It's undoubtedly something extraordinary: like a live-action Miyazaki film, with Days Of Heaven narration, set in a dirt-poor community at an unspecified time of crisis. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJul 12, 2012
A mixture of magical realism, Southern gothic, coming-of-age movie, star turn for first-timers, disaster story and out-and-out strangeness. It's unlike any film you've seen. Read full review
90
Boxoffice MagazineRay GreeneJun 22, 2012
Seek this one out though, because it's too unique and too defiantly strange to survive for long in today's Darwinian and consumerist exhibition environment. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovJul 11, 2012
It's a jaw-droppingly good performance from this pint-sized, first-time actor. Read full review
88
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanJul 19, 2012
Perhaps Zeitlin isn't really making an issue of class distinctions. Maybe he's just suggesting that we don't know these people very well, and our lives would be richer if we did. Read full review
88
USA TodayClaudia PuigJun 27, 2012
It's unlikely there will be a film as visually stunning or poetic this year - or perhaps any year - to rival Beasts of the Southern Wild. Read full review
88
ObserverRex ReedJun 26, 2012
Don't miss this one. A brave and inspired antidote to time-wasting mainstream movies, it is unlike anything you've seen before or will likely ever see again. In short, it is unforgettable. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineJun 24, 2012
Benh Zeitlin's lived-in, almost abstract sense of social realism is partly what makes the film so refreshing and uniquely affecting. Read full review
85
MovielineMichelle OrangeJun 29, 2012
The success of this exuberant, affecting debut feature from director Benh Zeitlin depends on his ability to universalize the particular, in this case by drawing us into the perspective of a six-year-old girl living in squalor and feeling and uncertainty in the Louisiana bayou, then telling our own story from behind it. Read full review
83
IndieWireEric KohnJun 25, 2012
If nothing else, this memorable effort eloquently displays Hushpuppy's fragile understanding of her world, where the only certainty is that nothing lasts forever. That makes "Beasts" into a gigantic triumph even when it falls apart. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawOct 19, 2012
Beasts of the Southern Wild is a vividly poetic and maybe even therapeutic response to one of the most painful and mortifying episodes in modern American history, second only to 9/11. Read full review
80
Total FilmKate StablesOct 1, 2012
Despite its hard-scrabble setting, eco-gloominess and dystopian story, this dark fairytale is engagingly vivid and life-affirming. An ambitious love letter to a Louisiana way of life that's being literally washed away. Read full review
80
SalonAndrew O'HehirJul 1, 2012
The point of watching the film, and the only reason to see it, is the experience of watching it, which sounds tautological or something, but is just true. It's a powerful visual and sonic creation with unforgettable characters, set in a heartache-inducing imaginary vision of American community, worlds away from hyper-technologized urban existence. Read full review
70
Village VoiceMelissa AndersonJun 26, 2012
In trying through incessant narration to make a six-year-old a prolix sage, Zeitlin can't avoid falling into sticky sentimentality. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliJun 26, 2012
The problem with Beasts of the Southern Wild is that, like "The Tree of Life," it seeks to integrate its small, very personal story into a much larger, more ambitious tapestry. Read full review
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