A film review by Craig J. Koban July 28, 2022

THE SEA BEAST  ½ 

2022, PG, 115 mins.

Karl Urban as Jacob Holland (voice)  /  Zaris-Angel Hator as Maisie (voice)  /   Jared Harris as Captain Crow (voice)  /  Marianne Jean-Baptiste as Sarah Sharpe (voice)  /  Dan Stevens as Admiral Hornagold (voice)  /  Kathy Burke as Gwen Batterbee (voice)  /  Jim Carter as King (voice)

ORIGINAL FILM

If you exclude its rather bland title, Netflix's newest computer animated film THE SEA BEAST is a stunningly designed, epically staged, thematically deep, and undeniably charming aquatic adventure that comes off like a winning hybrid of HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON and THE PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, and while plotting its own uniquely innovative course.

The film marks the solo feature directorial debut of Chris Williams, who previously co-directed BOLT and the Oscar winning BIG HERO SIX for Disney, and the finest thing going for it is how wonderfully and shrewdly it defies expectations in the material, not to mention it goes far deeper with its core ideas than what we're usually given with animated fare.  That, and THE SEA BEAST is a spectacularly beautiful animated film to boot, which boasts multiple eye popping sequences involving an ever escalating war between mankind and unfathomably huge marine creatures.  Williams manages to evoke an old fashioned sense of derring-do as far as swashbuckling adventure films go, but he also has time for some atypically smart character dynamics that poses thoughtful messages about just warfare and the dangers of misjudging your perceived enemies. 

The world building here is also robustly strong and efficient, and as the film opens we're introduced to notion that massive seas monsters do in fact exist, making the lives for explorers all the more dangerous.  There's an Ahab-like figure in Captain Crow (voiced by Jared Harris), who has been tasked countless times over to seek out and hunt down his own Moby Dick in the form of these creatures that he wishes to exterminate with extreme prejudice.  Crow is pretty hostile towards his prey, seeing as he has essentially become obsessed with them and the one creature that took his one eye.  Regardless of his current mental state, Crow is revered as a bona fide legend in his trade and his joined on his missions by the plucky and headstrong Jacob (Karl Urban), who's poised to be Crow's successor as captain of his vessel The Inevitable (great name for a ship, BTW).  Promising the King (Jim Carter) that he will find the mother of all monsters dubbed The Red Buster, Crow is taken aback when the monarch has hired his own rival sea beast hunter in Hornagold (Dan Stevens) to the task at hand, leaving Crow feeling like he has to pull out all of the stops to find this mythical monster.  Concurrent to this is the tail of Maisie (Zaris-Angel Hator), who has escaped her orphanage with a zest for adventure.  She manages to stow away onboard The Inevitable, much to Crow and Jacob's dismay (she grew up revering Crow's exploits as a form of escape from the painful memories of her parent's deaths at sea).  After a devastating encounter, Jacob and Maisie find themselves separated from Crow and his crew, after which time they have a very close encounter with the Red Buster, who turns out to perhaps not be all that deadly after all. 

One thing that really stands out for this Netflix animated film is its look, and THE SEA BEAST is pretty darn close to rivaling just about any other big budget studio effort on a level of artistry and polish.  Outside of the thanklessly realistic rendering of the stupendous oceanic settings here (which serve as a constant backdrop and visual focal point of interest throughout), the film is an absolute explosion of elegantly vibrant colors, which pop especially well in the streaming giant's Dolby Vision presentation.  Williams also wisely understands how to give the sea beasts in THE SEA BEAST a mouth dropping sense of awe inspiring scale set against their human pursuers.  The monsters here are not just big, they're...like...Kaiju big and would make the beasties in PACIFIC RIM blush with envy.  These creatures aren't scary designs either; they all have a sort of strange ethereal beauty and eloquence to them despite the intimidatingly large shadow that they cast on everything and everyone in their path.  The mighty Red Buster itself looks conspicuously like Toothless in HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, except not black and much, much larger, but his overall design has a stark and effective simplicity alongside an eye-popping grandeur.  Considering the story trajectory (which I will get to soon), the temptation here would have been to make Red Buster too cutesy, but Williams and his stellar animators know how to sell it as both striking and fearsome all the same. 

The larger subplot involving Jacob and Maisie being forced to befriend one another to ensure their survival apart from Crow's ship is of chief importance, especially when it leads to them challenging their own preconceived ideas as to the Red Buster's real threat level...and who the real threats in this world are.  That's not to say that the sea beasts in the film are not a potential source of danger to humans.  If threatened, they'll defend themselves to the death, and considering their size and power that gives them a huge advantage over the likes of Crow and company.  Again, to draw further analogies to HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, THE SEA BEAST deals with a civilized society living in constant fear of their monstrous enemies, and all while not fully understanding what truly makes them tick.  As Jacob and Maisie are marooned away from The Inevitable on a far away island and have to come face-to-face - literally - with "Red" (as Maisie comes to call it) they begin to appreciate and understand what a complex animal it is and how maybe - just maybe - the deliriously power hungry and growing madder by the day Crow and his war profiteering King might be the real enemies of the people.  I appreciate the thematic about-face that THE SEA BEAST takes: It goes from being a rip-roaring monster hunter adventure to a sobering and gentle commentary about peace and understanding, and it takes the moral high ground by not dumbing down the material for children or making it seem force fed to adults viewers.  That's a tough middle ground to appease, by Williams successfully achieves just that in showing a few humans that grow to empathize their multi-generational enemies. 

The character dynamics are also uncommonly strong and well developed.  Any film - animated or not - injecting a cute and precocious child into the mix runs the risk of lightning things up too much, but Maisie - voiced sincerely and energetically by Zaris-Angel Hator - is engagingly spunky as well as a courageous figure of our investment; she has to be braver than brave when it comes to confronting society's most deeply held traditions and norms about sea monsters and flipping them over.  She's vocally well paired with Urban's gallant Jacob, who could have just been yet another one-note square jawed hero on auto-pilot, but he shares a similar dark past with Maisie in terms of both of them losing parents at a very early age and while at sea.  Their shared family tragedy binds them together and gives the overall story in THE SEA BEAST a bit more intriguing complexity (the opening sequence showing Crow saving Jacob as a child is grippingly staged).  Maisie is tasked with making people change their views of sea creatures, whereas Jacob has to make a tough segue from a tunnel-visioned accomplice of Crow's to someone that wants to let go of his monster hunting ways and learn to live with these gargantuan beings.  Jacob and Maisie work as an intended surrogate father/daughter pair, but they also learn to work as equal minded partners that respect what each brings to the table.