Beasts of the Southern Wild

Ever wondered what the end of the world would look like?
The Bathtub is a town precariously perched on the wetlands of Louisiana, cut off from society by a giant levy built to protect those on the other side. But The Beasts of the Southern Wild is not your conventional disaster movie and we witness The Bathtub’s destruction not from a news helicopter’s perspective but through the powerful imagination of Hushpuppy, a young girl.This device lends the film the fairy-tale, hallucinatory quality that makes it so enjoyable. The Aurochs, the beasts of the title, are not mutant pigs but primeval creatures previously imprisoned within the ice caps, and not conjured up by CGI but played by real animals.

The Aurochs, and similar flights of fancy, give the first half of the film a lolloping pace but quickly, in a mixture of fantasy and realism, the Bathtubbers are rescued against their will by those of the other side of the levy. After an hour absorbed in the chaotic life of Hushpuppy, the sanitised surfaces, glaring lights and aggressive whiteness of the shelter they’re moved to, feels sinister and disturbing. It’s not a place where an imagination like Hushpuppy’s can take root.

There aren’t many films, like this, that can successfully marry adventure with grizzly monsters and serious questions on how we treat the dispossessed.