OUT NOW: Beast

Following the death of his wife, Nate (Idris Elba) takes his daughters back to his spouse’s homeland, South Africa.

While on a safari, they get ambushed by a rogue lion who has been driven mad by the massacre of his pride.

With little water or weapons, Nate will have to dig deep to save his family from the beast…

Beast is not a good movie.

And there are elements which could count against it:

The opening scenes are clunky in terms of exposition, and there are plenty of moments where characters do things which make no sense.

But it never completely falls over.

Beast feels like a combination of Cujo and The Ghost and the Darkness - and not in a bad way.

This movie is a lot of fun. And it does what is written on the tin.

It is a straightforward horror movie about an ordinary guy protecting his family from a lion, and while there are a few silly moments and obvious scripting, that is part of the charm.

Family trauma? Check. 

Broken relationship with teenagers? Check.

Best friend who will not make it out of the movie alive? Check.

I am not a fan of logic gaps in movies. I am also not particularly ‘theatre smart’ when it comes to these things. But there are some fairly obvious flaws in the story that are kind of irritating at first but once the action gets going, it does not matter. 

The lion itself is terrific. It is realised through CGI, but for the most part, it looks like it is in the environment and interacting with the actors.

While the script is very formulaic, the story does take a couple of fun zags - one involving a tranquiliser dart - that prevent it from being dull.

And some of the more familiar parts of the script feel like they’ve gone through a polish to add a little more wit - when Norah is asked what she wants to do when she grows up, she says she wants to become a therapist for families.

Plus the generic nature of the story adds to the fun - the movie starts to feel like a game, where you are trying to predict which of the obvious foreshadowed elements are going to be introduced, and in what order.

The movie is better directed than it is written. Baltasar Kormákur has a good feeling for suspense, and knows how to use onscreen space to build tension. Philippe Rousselot shoots the movie with a lot of steadicam shots - the camerawork gets pretty frenetic but you always know where you are in the scene.

Producer Will Packer has been trying to keep mid-range theatrical genre movies afloat for about a decade - he produced a lot of the Screen Gems thrillers, like Obsessed, and comedies like Girls Trip and the Think Like A Man series. Hopefully Beast is not the last time he gets behind a no-frills creature feature. We need more programmer-level movies like this.

The acting is fine. Idris Elba is overqualified for this but he lends the movie some credibility - he cannot save the early scenes but once the action moves to the truck, he and the rest of the cast take the peril seriously.

Even when [redacted] runs away from the truck, it makes some emotional sense.

The actors playing Elba’s daughters are good. Iyana Halley has the more stereotypical role as the rebellious older daughter Mer, but she is fine. As younger daughter Norah, Leah Sava Jeffries gets some of the best MacGyver-ish moments in the movie - I was half-expecting her to be the one who ends up fighting the lion.

Beast is never going to win any awards. It does not have to - it is a movie designed for hanging out with your friends, eating junk food and talking back to the screen.

Definitely the better movie involving Idris Elba and cats.