A One Mann’s Movies review of “The Sea Beast” (2022).
The last gap in my Oscars “Animated Feature” category, “The Sea Beast” (available on Netflix) is a little hidden gem of a movie. Perfect, near lifelike animation, combined with a stirring story. This is a great family watch.
Bob the Movie Man Rating:
Plot Summary:
A kingdom is being terrorised by all manner of sea beasts, and crack teams of “Hunters” head to sea to destroy them. Among them are Captain Crow (Jared Harris) of “The Inevitable”, together with his adopted son Jacob (Karl Urban). But when young stowaway Maisie (Zaris-Angel Hator) joins the crew she brings a different perspective as to how the creatures should be viewed.
Certification:
UK: PG; US: PG. (From the BBFC: “Violence, threat, language”).
Talent:
Starring: Karl Urban, Jared Harris, Zaris-Angel Hator, Marianne Jean-Baptiste.
Directed by: Chris Williams.
Written by: Chris Williams & Nell Benjamin (with Mattson Tomlin & Sam Stratton as story consultants).
Twitter Handle: #TheSeaBeast.
With shades of Ray Harryhausen, Big Red takes on the Crab in the lastest WWF bout. (Source: Netflix).
“The Sea Beast” Review:
Positives:
- This was a REAL surprise. I thought the movie would be a “make-weight” in the category (it was not nominated for the BAFTAs). But this was genuinely the most enjoyable watch of all of the animated features in this year’s awards round.
- The animation is flawless, with photo-realistic backgrounds and great (and extremely diverse) characters. (It’s another film portraying strong female role-models.) The action scenes are genuinely exciting, not something that I generally get from animations.
- The story is complex and multi-layered. It seems pretty vanilla – a variation on “Moby Dick” with Captain Crow as Ahab – until you get halfway through and then it takes an unexpected turn, blurring the lines between good and evil.
- As with all these animation films, it’s fun to spot the guest voices in the mix. Obvious ones for me were Jim Carter (Carson from “Downton Abbey“) and Kathy Burke as the witchy Gwen Batterbie, but I completely missed that Dan Stevens was the voice of Admiral Hornagold. All good “Pointless” answers!
- Some excellent sea-faring music by Marc Mancini.
Negatives:
- The only character that didn’t feel quite as realistic to me was “Red”, who seemed to be rather too much of a large smooth red blob. A bit more texturing and character would have helped here for me.
Summary Thoughts on “The Sea Beast”
The film must have been well received, since a sequel is in the works. For this is a cracking story of derring do on the high seas, this animation is highly recommended for a family watch. Probably kids of 5 and up would enjoy this one, but kids under that age might be frightened by some of the scenes.
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Trailer for “The Sea Beast”
The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-E-IGQCsPo .
