Mark Reviews Movies: BEAST (2022)

Beast, Universal Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 18, 2022

If the lion in the movie about a human-killing lion doesn't work, the movie doesn't work. There's a moment in Beast, in which a family of three and their close friend try to evade such an animal, when it becomes obvious that director Baltasar Kormákur and his visual effects team got the most important element of this film right.

It comes when we first get a really good look at the lion, which has already killed some poachers and slaughtered an entire village of people off-screen. The big cat jumps atop the roof a jeep that contains three of our main characters, and as it claws at and looks through the sunroof of the vehicle, a glob of saliva forms and falls from its chops. That's a little detail, but it goes a long way to ensuring that we believe this digital creation, which isn't always visually convincing in terms of blending in with the real world. It does, though, possess enough weight and personality to compensate for its shortcomings.

Kormákur is also a smart enough filmmaker—and screenwriter Ryan Engle is a clever enough storyteller—to know that the presence of the monster, as this lion undoubtedly is in its persistence and ruthlessness, doesn't always make a monster movie, anyway. Its absence is vital, too, because the build-up to it—the evidence of its power for destruction and death, the suggestion of its nearness, the feeling that it could appear at any given moment—is key to the payoff of finally seeing it. This film sets up just enough dread, as well as a worthwhile dynamic between the human characters who have to face the creature, for lion to do its job here. It may not always seem as if it's real, but there's a real terror when it does arrive.

The story, which begins with a prologue of poachers in Africa killing a pride of lions and then being picked off one at a time by a surviving male cat (We get to see its maw leap at the camera before scene cuts to black), revolves around that aforementioned family. They're made up of Dr. Nate Samuels (Idris Elba) and his two daughters, Meredith (Iyana Halley) and Norah (Leah Jeffries).

Norah's old enough to be hurt by her father's previous absence but young enough to worry about losing her dad because of her emotions, and Meredith is old enough to wear her resentment of her father on her sleeve. For his part, Nate is just trying to hold the family together and be enough for them now, since he fears he wasn't enough for them earlier.

We don't necessarily expect a film such as this one, which does eventually become a series of suspense sequences and scenes of brutal animal attacks, to have this intelligence about and compassion for its characters. It's worth appreciating here, to be sure, especially since the main cast members—with Elba hinting at a void of vulnerability beneath his cool confidence and the two younger actors displaying natural instincts—are quite good in these roles.

Rounding out the main players is an equally solid Sharlto Copley as Martin, Nate's friend by way of his late wife, who grew up with Martin, and the girls' unofficial uncle. The family has come to Martin's home in Africa to get away from New York City, spend some time together, and go on a safari in the country loved by the woman all of them loved. Engle doesn't rush the group's first encounter with the lion, partly because the characters do matter here and mainly because the delayed promise of the beast is part of the game in such material.

The director understands that, too, and Kormákur technique here, which incorporates multiple and lengthy one-takes (or convincing facsimiles thereof) to follow the group as they investigate one scene of the lion's carnage or as they travel to get help, is more refined than we might anticipate from such a story. Those long takes establish and continue a lot of suspense, just by their nature of feeling time passing—and building toward something—and of having our perspective limited to the characters the camera is following. When the lion first really appears, leaping out of the brush and chasing Nate toward the jeep, the camera tracks the animal, too. That's when we get the globule of drool on the sunroof, the claws scratching at metal and glass as it paws at and climbs the jeep, and its front legs grabbing at Nate through a broken window.

Yes, the lion is clearly a visual effect, although the animators give it a photorealistic look (which tricks us in certain flashes) and some unmistakable tics of physicality that make it seem like a real—and really deadly—animal. The rest of the trick is in the illusion of mass, and when the lion slams into the jeep or Nate has to fight it off (or fight with it, as he does in a gruesome, bloody climax), the filmmakers and actors persuasively sell that this creature is tangible and violently interacting with things and people alike.

The story follows a familiar path, obviously, although it offers some surprise in, for example, how long certain characters survive this ordeal and how those poachers figure into the narrative later (The movie's premise, although inherently silly, does take the idea of nature rebelling against human cruelty seriously—although without preachiness). First and foremost, though, Beast is a thrill machine, but its attention to character and technique means that the film's thrills aren't empty ones. That's enough.

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