BEAST
***
Director: Baltasar Kormákur
Screenplay: Ryan Eagle, story by Jaime Primak Sullivan.
Principal cast:
Idris Elba
Leah Jeffries
Iyana Halley
Sharlto Copley
Martin Munro
Tafara Nyatsanza
Country: USA/Iceland
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 93 mins.
Australian release date: 25 August 2022.
B is for beast, B is for B-Movie and B is for Baltasar Kormákur, the Icelandic director of the action-adventure film Beast, and this picture certainly has all three B’s: the beast is a massive rogue lion, the movie is most definitely of the ‘B’ kind and Baltasar directs it with panache, making the most of a flawed script. Animal versus Man flicks have been a fixture of the cinema since the earliest of times, the creatures in them often having gone bad after suffering at the hands of men and Beast is no exception. The vengeful lion in this film has lost his entire pride to a gang of mercenary poachers and he’s made the connection that the two-legged beasts are responsible for the death of his family. As a result, any human he comes into contact with is fair game - as such, the plot could be seen as a cautionary tale for anyone intent on despoiling the natural world.
Shooting on location in Limpopo province and Northern Cape province, South Africa, Oscar-winning, veteran Director of Photography Philippe Rousselot’s camera-work has done a lot to increase the tension of the movie because many of the scenes are filmed from the point-of-view of the actor on screen. Explaining the decision to film this way, Kormákur said, “I want you to feel like you’re in that moment. I want that tension to be palpable. I want it to feel like when the camera moves, you move.” And it works, because half of the time you feel like you’re in an old-school pantomime where, when the villain arrives on stage, the audience is expected to call out, “He’s behind you!”
The story itself is fairly simple. A grieving family from New York, father Dr. Nate Samuels (Idris Elba), and his two daughters, 18-year-old Meredith (Iyana Halley) and 13-year-old Norah (Leah Jeffries), are on a visit to South Africa where Nate and his recently deceased wife were born and he hopes the visit will help the girls come to terms with the death of their mother. They stay with Nate’s oldest friend, gamekeeper and biologist Martin Battles (Sharlto Copley), and waste no time before heading off into the bush so that the two city-dwelling girls can see the African wildlife for themselves. Unfortunately for them, it isn’t very long before they come across the first evidence of the lion’s baleful work and, of course, things go terribly wrong when they go to alert the authorities. From then on, it’s a battle of wits and determination as Nate has to do everything in his power to defend his family and the lion tries to avenge his.
One of the most interesting things about Beast is that none of the scenes where lions interact with humans were filmed with actual lions. In fact, no lions were used at all for principal photography, which is a credit to the team responsible for the VFX because the lions look very real and Elba does an amazing job convincing us that he really is fighting a lion mano a mano. Where the movie is more frustrating is in the screenplay’s dialogue. It becomes annoying when, every time the girls are ordered to stay in the car, you just know that one of them is going to set off into the lion’s territory on some personal mission. Or when they’re told to be quiet, one will invariably make a loud noise or scream. Come on, Mr. Eagle, it may be conventional in films of this kind but couldn’t you be a bit more subtle about it?
Beast is no King Kong, Cujo or Jaws but it does have some fantastic scenery and the lion is genuinely scary, so there are thrills to be had, but I suspect that viewers who’ll get the most out of this movie will be of a similar age to the girls featured in it.
Screenplay: Ryan Eagle, story by Jaime Primak Sullivan.
Principal cast:
Idris Elba
Leah Jeffries
Iyana Halley
Sharlto Copley
Martin Munro
Tafara Nyatsanza
Country: USA/Iceland
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 93 mins.
Australian release date: 25 August 2022.
B is for beast, B is for B-Movie and B is for Baltasar Kormákur, the Icelandic director of the action-adventure film Beast, and this picture certainly has all three B’s: the beast is a massive rogue lion, the movie is most definitely of the ‘B’ kind and Baltasar directs it with panache, making the most of a flawed script. Animal versus Man flicks have been a fixture of the cinema since the earliest of times, the creatures in them often having gone bad after suffering at the hands of men and Beast is no exception. The vengeful lion in this film has lost his entire pride to a gang of mercenary poachers and he’s made the connection that the two-legged beasts are responsible for the death of his family. As a result, any human he comes into contact with is fair game - as such, the plot could be seen as a cautionary tale for anyone intent on despoiling the natural world.
Shooting on location in Limpopo province and Northern Cape province, South Africa, Oscar-winning, veteran Director of Photography Philippe Rousselot’s camera-work has done a lot to increase the tension of the movie because many of the scenes are filmed from the point-of-view of the actor on screen. Explaining the decision to film this way, Kormákur said, “I want you to feel like you’re in that moment. I want that tension to be palpable. I want it to feel like when the camera moves, you move.” And it works, because half of the time you feel like you’re in an old-school pantomime where, when the villain arrives on stage, the audience is expected to call out, “He’s behind you!”
The story itself is fairly simple. A grieving family from New York, father Dr. Nate Samuels (Idris Elba), and his two daughters, 18-year-old Meredith (Iyana Halley) and 13-year-old Norah (Leah Jeffries), are on a visit to South Africa where Nate and his recently deceased wife were born and he hopes the visit will help the girls come to terms with the death of their mother. They stay with Nate’s oldest friend, gamekeeper and biologist Martin Battles (Sharlto Copley), and waste no time before heading off into the bush so that the two city-dwelling girls can see the African wildlife for themselves. Unfortunately for them, it isn’t very long before they come across the first evidence of the lion’s baleful work and, of course, things go terribly wrong when they go to alert the authorities. From then on, it’s a battle of wits and determination as Nate has to do everything in his power to defend his family and the lion tries to avenge his.
One of the most interesting things about Beast is that none of the scenes where lions interact with humans were filmed with actual lions. In fact, no lions were used at all for principal photography, which is a credit to the team responsible for the VFX because the lions look very real and Elba does an amazing job convincing us that he really is fighting a lion mano a mano. Where the movie is more frustrating is in the screenplay’s dialogue. It becomes annoying when, every time the girls are ordered to stay in the car, you just know that one of them is going to set off into the lion’s territory on some personal mission. Or when they’re told to be quiet, one will invariably make a loud noise or scream. Come on, Mr. Eagle, it may be conventional in films of this kind but couldn’t you be a bit more subtle about it?
Beast is no King Kong, Cujo or Jaws but it does have some fantastic scenery and the lion is genuinely scary, so there are thrills to be had, but I suspect that viewers who’ll get the most out of this movie will be of a similar age to the girls featured in it.