Every Wes Anderson Film Ranked Worst To Best

Working with child actors can often produce less than stellar results, usually due to the performers lack of experience, but Anderson struck gold here with the dual lead performances of Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward. Both actors perfectly encapsulate that odd childhood feeling of not quite fitting in with your surroundings, especially if things within your own family are a little tense.

The cast is rounded out by stellar performances from the likes of Bill Murray and Frances McDormand as Hayward’s parents, and Edward Norton as a rule-following but ultimately caring scoutmaster. Bob Balaban’s narrator, appearing periodically to warn us of the impending dangerous weather, helps lend some tension to the proceeding and the final sequence where the thunderstorm strikes the characters’ New England island never fails to leave the audience’s nerves in shreds.

Anderson knows how bittersweet childhood nostalgia can be and plays it for all its dramatic worth. The carefree nature of that period of your life, combined with the tragic knowledge that you can never go back to those simpler times, is a prominent theme throughout the film.

When the small cove that the children make camp at, the titular Moonrise Kingdom, is washed away during the storm, it’s genuinely heart-breaking and again marks Anderson as a master of manipulating audience’s emotions.