What makes this movie good

I can see how some people think the portrayal of Hushpuppy and her community is exploitative and relies on racist and classist stereotypes. I agree with a lot of those complaints. Personally, I have major problems with the depictions of domestic abuse, violence, alcoholism, self-imposed isolationism, and the apparent oafishness of Wink and the other people of Bathtub. I wish that the idiosyncrasies and intricacies of their culture had been more clearly developed, because I found it really interesting.

But the story was written by a Southern white woman (Lucy Alibar) about a little white boy in Georgia as she was trying to cope with the idea of losing her parents. In the end, coping with the loss of one's parents is what the movie is really about, and I think that's where its power is, for the most part. I bawled my eyes out after I watched it, especially when I read this analysis of it from Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/headshrinkers-guide-the-galaxy/201303/psychoanalyst-looks-beasts-the-southern-wild. Hushpuppy's line, “Everyone loses the thing that made them. The brave must stay and watch it happen. They don’t run," will always stick with me, like peanut butter on the roof of my brain.

I don't know why Alibar and Benh Zeitlin turned Hushpuppy into a black girl and placed her in Louisiana for the screenplay, but I thought it was a terrific choice. I appreciate that they gave black actors the time of day by giving them leading roles in a sensitive film, because that is a rarity in Hollywood. This is, to me, an example of actual colorblind casting, which I tend to think is a mythical practice except in the case of Night of the Living Dead. I also think it actually makes the story more poignant because it touches upon some issues concerning black girlhood that probably aren't even on Alibar and Zeitlin's radar, such as father/daughter relationships, dealing with abandonment, dealing with violence, learning to conceal strong emotions, coming of age too soon and having to shoulder a lot of responsibility very early in childhood, and coping with poverty and cultural alienation. The movie doesn't resolve any these issues, but I think that's a good thing. I think the story would be overwhelming and heavyhanded if it had tried, and I'm not sure I'd trust the filmmakers to do it well anyway, seeing as I don't think they had Hushpuppy's gender or race in mind at all when they made the film. For me, those issues just sort of came up incidentally.

In that sense, I think that Beasts works on two levels as a somewhat naive but still profound intentional and coincidental masterpiece. It's kind of phenomenal how it worked out, imho.

Tl;dr, I liked it a lot, despite its problems.