Mark Reviews Movies: THE SEA BEAST (2022)

The Sea Beast, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 7, 2022

Just on its own, the opening scene of The Sea Beast is a marvel of computer animation. Technology advances so quickly that sometimes we perceive it to be stagnant, simply because we take for granted all of the little changes that amount to much bigger ones. Here, co-writer/director Chris Williams begins his animated fable about giant monsters of the ocean and swashbuckling hunters on masted ships with water, obviously.

It's a stunning sight—the way the sea moves in little waves, with foam gathering on the crests of that motion, against a sky that's mostly illuminated by the moon and partially lit by the red glow of a fiery, sinking ship in the near distance. If not for the cartoon-looking human figure at the center of this striking tableau, we might even think these shots are the real deal—not the work of who-knows-how-many hours of study and toil in front of computer monitors.

It makes sense, of course, that Williams and his team of animators would get the look and physics of the sea right, since most of this story takes place on various ships on the water or in places that are surrounded by the wet stuff. Boy, though, did they ever get it right.

As for other elements of animation—such as the those landscapes and characters and ships—that are present here, they're alternately as detailed—when it comes to the vessels and buildings and vegetation of a jungle island, for example—as the water and intentionally stylized—when we're talking about the human characters and the monsters. As for tale itself, it's fine. The screenplay by Williams and Nell Benjamin is also a bit too familiar in the way it uses these beasts and the ongoing battle against them as an excuse for multiple setpieces of spectacle, a little bit of humor, and a heavy dose of allegory, once it becomes clear that the monsters aren't as terrible as they're cracked up to be.

There's something missing, though, from pushing this movie over the edge, beyond its obvious technical merits and its narrative ambitions. It's missing some unique spark of a personality to call its own, perhaps.

Some of that absence comes from the characters. Our hero is Jacob Holland (voice of Karl Urban), a master sailor, strategist, and fighter who's entirely in the vein of daring and swaggering adventurers—and not much beyond that. His tragic origin, as an orphan and the sole survivor of a ship—the sinking one from the opening scene—that was attacked by a sea monster, doesn't add much more to him. Williams and Benjamin's use of seafaring jargon and language of an unspecified olden-day period gives the dialogue a stilted quality that occasionally hinders the voice actors from getting at the heart of what makes their characters more than mere archetypes.

One actor who does move past it is Jared Harris, who voices the Ahab-esque Captain Crow. Crow is out for revenge on a monster called the Red Bluster when we meet him and his crew, including Jacob, on the ship the Inevitable. The beast took his eye in battle, but Crow's obsession with vengeance doesn't prevent him from showing affection for Jacob, whom he sees as a son and the inheritor of his family's ship, and turning away from the Bluster to rescue another ship being assaulted by a different monster.

That battle, as with the rest of the action scenes or ones featuring the monsters in general here, is impressive—not only because of the massive scale of the monsters, but also in the way Williams uses characters, props, ships, and the vastness of the sea to give that sense of scale tangible context (One moment, for example, has a sailor tumbling into the water, and the camera lingers beneath him, framed within a section of the ship and one of the monster's nimble tentacles). After a young orphan named Maisie (voice of Zaris-Angel Hator) stows away on the Inevitable in an attempt to join the crew, a fight with the Bluster strands Jacob and the girl in a lifeboat, which is swallowed by the monster and carried away to an island that's deserted—save for some baby and adult beasts.

The rest of this, of course, has Jacob and Maisie discovering that the sea monsters might simply be protective and defensive animals (The Bluster might have been saving the pair from Crow, who doesn't appreciate the girl's efforts to save the ship at the cost of losing the beast). Meanwhile, Crow becomes more determined to hunt and kill the Bluster, wrongly believing it has eaten his adopted son. The scenes of the stranded, mismatched crewmates are played with humor (some cute and squishy baby monsters) and tenderness (The two look out for each other like family and start to communicate with and help the Bluster), and it's all leading to a series of standoffs, with Maisie eventually having a political awakening against propaganda and monarchy that's one step from revolutionary.

Much of this message-making comes across as over-compensation for the lack of some real heart, tonal clarity, narrative ambition, or definitive characters in The Sea Beast. The movie's specific technical accomplishments are undeniable, and it's too bad the story surrounding them aren't even approaching their equal.

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