The Sea Beasts (2022)

The Sea Beast (2022)

 6/10

 

Starring the voices of

Karl Urban

Zaris-Angel Hator

Jared Harris

Marianne Jean-Baptiste

Dan Stevens

Kathy Burke

 

Directed by Chris Williams

 

This movie is a surprisingly good animation from Netflix, and for me, the main reason they were able to make this animation so nice is that they got someone like Chris Williams steering the ship.

The name Chris Williams is familiar to me, and his work is also familiar to anyone who loves Disney films. He’s been part of the production team at Disney since the time of Mulan (1998) and through to Raya and the Last Dragon (2021). You will see thread of his work on movies like Moana, and this movie is set in a world like that of Pirates of the Caribbean, he also picked things up from How to Train Your Dragon. He mixed all of this with a new story to give us this action-adventure movie that’s packed with some wholesome family fun.

I liked the excitement when the movie kicked off with what looked like a Moby Dick tale. That gave it a more mature start, with the movie deciding to shift gears as Captain Crow showed that he wasn’t as obsessed with the hunt as Captain Ahab was with Moby Dick.

The movie’s main cast is a stowaway little girl named Maisie. Maisie lives in an orphanage set up by the King and Queen, who care for the orphans of the men and women who died protecting their kingdom from these sea beasts. These hunters sail the seas, and they are funded by the royals to kill all the sea beasts they can find. The aim is to help the kingdom expand as the creatures are driven back into the seas.

Maisie breaks out of the orphanage and stows away on the most famous ship in the kingdom, The Inevitable, led by Captain Crow and his adopted son, Jacob. When the hunters’ work is threatened and the life of the captain is at stake, Jacob stands in the middle to wager the hunters’ reputation against that of the kingdom’s navy. There’s a popular sea creature everyone wants dead: the Red Bluster. So, The Inevitable and the navy go after the creature.

The Inevitable is the ship that comes across the creature first, and they’re losing the battle until Maisie makes a great decision to save the crew. This decision by the child annoys Crow, who points his gun at Maisie while Jacob tries to stop the mayhem about to unfold. Then, the Red Bluster returns and does the unimaginable.

Cool movie, and worth every moment I spent watching it.