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, January 08, 2013
This movie has to be seen to be believed, and to be believed, it simply has to be seen.
- CJ Johnson, ABC Radio (Australia), December 04, 2012
It doesn't ultimately make any sense at all and, for me, its charm wasn't enough to sustain the whole ramshackle structure.
- David Sexton, This is London, October 19, 2012
Benh Zeitlin's debut feature is part film, part hallucination: a ripe and gamey piece of what you might call Apocalyptic Southern Gothic, ambitious and flawed but sprinting with energy.
- Peter Bradshaw, Guardian [UK], October 18, 2012
Few American debuts in recent years have announced a talent as singular as that of Behn Zeitlin, the blazingly gifted director and co-writer of Beasts of the Southern Wild.
- Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph, October 18, 2012
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, October 16, 2012
Beautiful, funny, timely and tender, this is the American arthouse movie of the year.
- Damon Wise, Empire Magazine, October 15, 2012
An extraordinary film of raw, subtle power that blends jagged reality with elements of myth and moments of magic... easily qualifies as one of the most remarkable and unexpected films of the year.
- Jim Schembri, 3AW, September 15, 2012
Well, despite the camera work, I'm giving it three and a half.
- David Stratton, At the Movies (Australia), September 13, 2012
To put this film in the category of mere narrative is to do it a disservice, it's a wonderful mix of social realism, magic realism and at the heart of it is an extraordinary performance from young Quvenzhane Wallis.
- Margaret Pomeranz, At the Movies (Australia), September 13, 2012
Beasts of the Southern Wild is raucous and deliberately affecting - the talent lies in making that transformation appear offhand and improvised, as if it's unfolding on the spot.
- Craig Mathieson, The Sunday Age, September 13, 2012
Filmed with an amateur cast and staged with astonishing imagination and emotion, this is undoubtedly one of the great movie happenings of the year.
- Leigh Paatsch, Herald Sun (Australia), September 13, 2012
Beasts Of The Southern Wild is an unforgettable film, filled with piercing ideas and images, even if it doesn't always have control of them.
- Jim Poe, FILMINK (Australia), September 13, 2012
A visually sumptuous, thematically astute, heartwarming triumph.
- David Michael Brown, Empire Magazine Australasia, September 13, 2012
A remarkable cinematic experience that is both profound and immensely moving.
- Thomas Caldwell, Cinema Autopsy, September 12, 2012
Allegorical, wild and sometimes unfathomable ... a perfect festival film in that it experiments with cinema in its exploration of man's universe - from a rather doomed point of view
- Andrew L. Urban, Urban Cinefile, September 09, 2012
A piercing arrow to the heart as he makes his poetic statement about the plight of the changing world and the integral meshing of all the pieces of the universe which need to fit t
- Louise Keller, Urban Cinefile, September 09, 2012
Zeitlin's poetic fantasy never wavers from the child's rationalisation of the coming catastrophe and its aftermath, or her niggling belief that deep down, she might just be responsible.
- Fiona Williams, sbs.com.au, August 01, 2012
When can we watch it again?
- Sophie Ivan, Little White Lies, October 24, 2012
Like a series of dippy postcards sent by an enraptured child from a disaster zone.
- Nigel Andrews, Financial Times, October 18, 2012
