Beast – Film Review

A father and his two teenage daughters find themselves hunted by a massive rogue lion intent on proving that the savannah has but one apex predator. Idris Elba plays Dr. Nate Daniels, a recently widowed husband who returns to South Africa, where he first met his wife, on a long-planned trip with their daughters to a game reserve managed by Martin Battles (Sharlto Copley), an old family friend and wildlife biologist. But what begins as a journey of healing jolts into a fearsome fight for survival when a lion, a survivor of blood-thirsty poachers who now sees all humans as the enemy, begins stalking them.

The marketing for Baltasar Kormákur‘s Beast seemed to suggest that the film would be an intense, nail-biting film that would follow a dad who must do everything he can to protect his daughters from the dangerous threat that a blood-thirsty lion imposes on their lives in the middle of the wilderness.

It’s Idris Elba versus lion… or is it?

Not really. Beast is more or less a movie that spends a little bit of time on that but far too much time focusing on the buildup to the lion and them trying to be quiet while locked inside of a car. Sure, the film can occasionally be suspenseful as we are waiting to see where the lion will pop up next and what it will do to the family, but these moments are, unfortunately, too few and far between.

Kormákur’s film honestly feels like a movie we’ve all seen done a million times before with nothing new or exciting to bring to the table. Have you ever seen a movie that follows a man versus the wilderness? If so, then you’ve already seen Beast before. Trust me.

It’s also extremely weird to me that it takes thirty-five minutes for the lion to actually show up in the film in the first place, especially seeing as how this film runs at one-hour-and-twenty-eight minutes without credits. So, really, we barely even see the titular animal in the film despite the fact that that’s supposed to be what it’s about. The beast.

Instead what we get are plenty of scenes of Idris Elba and Sharlto Copley being best friends and having to protect each other from the outside. They try to be as quiet as they can. While these kinds of moments were obviously done to create tension, it fails miserably. It’s just plain boring.

All of the character depth here is fantastic, however, as are the performances. Elba is completely believable in this badass-style role, as is Sharlto Copley in one of his most understated performances to date. Iyana Halley and Leah Sava Jeffries are both terrific as the two young daughters, as well.

The cinematography by Philippe Rousselot is quite enticing to look at, and the musical score from Steven Price is quite bold and daring as well. There’s a lot to like visually and technically about Beast, but on a story level, it’s painfully flat.

Beast may feature a strong Idris Elba performance, but it’s an otherwise painfully flat survival thriller that we’ve seen done before countless times.