by Luca (’16)

This movie is very, very strange. Packed with metaphors that might mean nothing, this movie explores death and imagination. It doesn’t even explore the topic, it wanders in the rain, blasting a shotgun into a hurricane like the drunk and dying dad of Hushpuppy, our main character, who lives in a sinking island off Louisiana. Despite contending with rising sea levels, mythical beats, and an impending hurricane, Hushpuppy might just have super powers. She can talk to her mom who isn’t there and seems to have thawed out frozen prehistoric creatures by accident. Hushpuppy has a swirly of disgusting, grimy southern folk around her, living in the Bathtub, a small community on the verge of being swallowed up by the waves. This movie is very interesting, as the Hurricane comes and smothers the land with water. Eventually, Hushpuppy and the survivors of the Hurricane take to the rivers that used to be streets and homes. This movie is a little too wierd at times and at other times seems half baked, with criminal acts going un-punished and Hushpuppys imagination fusing with the real world so much that both are indistinguishable. This is interesting but causes plotholes as big as the eye of the death-dealing hurricane on the horizon. And there are characters that say absolutely nothing at all, like the children Hushpuppy hangs out with, and parens so incompetent in noticing their childrens absence that they probably are another figment of Hushpuppy’s imagination. This wierd parents also have nothing much to say either. While the movie’s meaning is extremely confused, being that the plot itself is extremely confused, it still is a good movie. The performances are real and the shaky camera and methodical pacing do make you feel that your there, in a rather unpleasant, yet magical place.