Beasts of the Southern Wild

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) is a fantasy-tinged drama you can watch online on iFILM. Six-year-old Hushpuppy lives with her father Wink on a flooded scrap of bayou the locals call the Bathtub, cut off from the mainland by a levee.

Wink raises her the hard way, drilling her to catch fish bare-handed and stand her ground against the storms. Then he falls ill, the ice caps melt somewhere far off, and the rising water starts swallowing the Bathtub whole. In Hushpuppy's mind, ancient beasts called aurochs break loose from the thawing ice and lumber toward home. With her father fading, she sets off to find the mother she barely knew.

Quvenzhané Wallis filmed this at six and became the youngest-ever Best Actress nominee at the Oscars; director Benh Zeitlin shot it in the Louisiana delta with a mostly non-professional cast and a restless handheld camera. The result feels closer to a child's fever dream than a tidy story. One for viewers who want lyrical, rough-edged indie filmmaking over spectacle. Stream Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) online on iFILM.