Pirate themed hunter ships roam the seas protecting people from the evil sea beasts. At least that's what orphan Maisie and hunter Jacob knew to be true... until they're saved by a sea beast Maisie names Red.
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Message
The Sea Beast does a great job at portraying government deception on a child's level. The royal government made up stories about the sea beasts being aggressive so that they could "get rich". After several generations and a few royal sponsored history books, the "fact" that sea beasts were aggressive was blindly accepted as truth. The sea monsters even become violently defensive in response to getting slaughtered for generations.
Once Maisie and Jacob befriend Red, who exposes them to her world, it is revealed that the sea beasts just want to be left alone. Since the sea monsters don't talk, this is all explained by Maisie as the movie progresses; she even gives a long speech about it at the end of the movie. This provides a great opportunity to talk with your children about real-world governmental, societal, and political deception in relation to your family's own values.
Content
Language
The sea beasts are referred to as a devil or demon on a couple occasions. Similarly, sending the sea beasts back to H-word was said several times too. God is used as an expression once, and a weapon is called "the hand of god". The 3-letter A-word was used [very obviously] once to describe someone.
There's no other swearing in this movie.
Fears
There's a scene of a sea beast attacking a ship in a dense fog and a scene of a thunderstorm; both are brief, but they are portrayed quite eerily. In one scene Jacob ventures out into the dark while various scary sea beast noises play in the background and Maisie tells him it's not safe outside.
There's a character that was clearly designed to look like a witch to the audience, but she is never called out as a witch or user of magic. She makes poisonous weapons and has a brief, but pretty creepy, scene.
Obviously there's several sea monsters, but they're more scary via their actions than their looks. Their size, surprise, growling face, and tendency to kill people are what make them scary; visually they roughly resemble really big animals that your kids may be familiar with (crab, walrus, sting ray, alligator gar, whale, snake). They're also portrayed more positively as the story progresses.
There is no fires, clowns, strong villains, kidnapping, or home break-ins.
Family & Relationships
A dad thinks he watches his adoptive son get eaten by a sea beast. Maisie and Jacob's parents were both killed by sea beasts in the past, and it is talked about several times.
Maisie sneaks out and runs away from the orphanage.
There is no divorce, sexual content, or bullying.
Other Content
There's not really any magic in the movie: large sea beasts exist, a witch looking character stirs poisons in a pot, and a tattoo briefly moves subtly.
The story heavily revolves around the idea of killing the sea beasts, so there's several fights involving cannons, harpoons, guns, knives, and swords. And during those fights the animation in combination with the music could bring about an intense feeling in children. At the end of the movie there's also a growing urgency to save Red before she's killed.
Since the sea beasts and hunters are at war with each other, talking about death and avoiding dying are present throughout the entire movie. The idea that hunters are "heroes who live a great life and die a great death" is repeated many times.
The royals re-wrote history and lied about the sea beasts to gain political power and get rich.
There is no time travel, evolution, LGBT, or religion.
Conclusion
Typically sea monsters and pirates are the bad guys, but in The Sea Beast they're the good guys. This provides a very fun atmosphere (even though it's pretty easy to draw some parallels to the How to Train Your Dragon series), plus a message that's not typically explored in kids movies. However, the language and some scary stuff is going to dictate if it's appropriate for your kids.
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