THE BEAST (2024) - Mark Reviews Movies

The Beast, Sideshow / Janus Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 4, 2024

A tale of anxiety and dread, The Beast is certainly a horror story, but it's not one in the way of so many modern horror movies. Co-writer/director Bertrand Bonello's film even opens with a joke about the routine and expectations of the genre. After all, a horror movie apparently must announce its intentions from the very start, so we watch as our main character walks around a space, picks up a knife after hearing some strange noises, and is terrified at the sight of some unseen beast.

The joke here is that Gabrielle Monnier, the protagonist, or maybe actor Léa Seydoux herself, who plays variations or reincarnations of that character across three different time periods, is only acting the scene against a large, green-screen set. The monster may not be real, but the feeling that it's close and ready to attack most certainly is. That's what's important to the character or characters, played with subtle nuances and a potent through line of underlying terror by Seydoux, and the film.

Instead, the material has an old-fashioned feel, which is appropriate for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it's based on the Henry James novella The Beast in the Jungle, and for another, one section of the decades-spanning story is set over a hundred years ago. Despite this, the film is also very much of the now, as another segment is set only a decade ago, and beyond that, this tale jumps forward 20 years into the future, too.

Basically, there's nothing new about the feeling that something is wrong with the world and humanity, and no matter what advances have been or will be made in technology and society and our understanding of ourselves, that feeling probably isn't going away any time soon, if ever. The horror here isn't some literal beast. It's the sense that we're trapped in a cycle of devastation, violence, and desensitization to every terrible thing that has happened and could or will happen in the future.

For Gabrielle, that feeling is strong. In the year 2044, artificial intelligence has more or less taken over the workings of society, and in its cold thought process, that system doesn't have much room, need, or patience for someone like Gabrielle. Essentially, she thinks and feels too much to do more than watch a database and stew in her apartment. If she wants to get anywhere, Gabrielle will have to become like so many others by undergoing a "cleansing" procedure, which confronts and deadens the traumas of past lives.

If it sounds absurd, the screenplay by Bonello, Guillaume Bréaud, and Benjamin Charbit doesn't treat it that way, and that's vital to the film's success. First and foremost, the premise is grounded in that emotional and psychological fear about the world and its most advanced inhabitants (Well, humans were until sometime in the 2020s, when AI took over following some unspecific catastrophe in the story's timeline, but the point still stands).

With that idea and mood firmly established, the filmmakers allow themselves the freedom to explore it across time, through significant changes to the world, and by way of notions that may seem quaint or the stuff of silly superstition but that fit right into the dread-filled atmosphere of the film. Here, signs and omens and psychics play significant roles, and we buy into it—not only because it's what Gabrielle believes, but also on account of how much the film itself creates an odd but convincing logic to these portents of doom.

The screenplay smartly eases us into that mindset, too. The first section, after establishing the future and the basic premise, is set in 1910 Paris, just before a great flood is about to overwhelm the city. In this era, Gabrielle lives a charmed life in a grand mansion, surrounded by other wealthy people, and, to any casual observer, without any apparent worry in the world. At a party, she reunites with Louis Lewanski (George MacKay), who met her once years ago at an opera. He remembers Gabrielle because she told him a very odd thing in confidence: She is always frightened that something terrible will happen to her or the people she loves.

The two continue meeting, and Gabrielle reconsiders her comfortable marriage to Georges (Martin Scali), who owns a doll factory currently changing from porcelain to celluloid. Another self-proclaimed "doll," an AI nanny called Kelly (Guslagie Malanda) who helps Gabrielle recover from her procedure, figures into the future segment, and by the way, we've already met Louis in 2044, too, where he's considering undergoing the same emotion-numbing process.

Meanwhile in 2014, Gabrielle, a model who wants to become an actress and who's housesitting in Los Angeles, will meet a different incarnation of Louis, as well. His character in that period is as far removed from the compassionate charmer of 1910 as could be imagined (MacKay is persuasive in both roles, giving the 2014 version an added layer of eeriness, since we and Gabrielle suspect there might be something softer beneath his nihilistic view of women). That entire section plays as a chilling thriller about an entitled man who becomes obsessed with Gabrielle for reasons she only comprehends either in the nick of time or too late.

It's rather impressive how Bonello creates isolated stories for each period, each one working in a mode that suits the era—a romantic melodrama in 1910, a psychological thriller about the extremes of isolation in 2014, a cerebral consideration of what makes us human in 2044. Beyond recurring characters (Marta Hoskins plays a seemingly legitimate psychic in two periods, for example), they're all connected by the uneasy sensation that something will go wrong, either because that's simply the way it goes or because Gabrielle unintentionally wills it to happen in her fear.

The connections, particularly how each tale is a tragedy but in unique ways, matter, as do the distinctions, which keeps us on edge as the plots of each section play off of and divert from each other. It's that all-encompassing sense of anxiety, though, that elevates The Beast and its decades-spanning narrative. Everything about the film points to the dread, embraces it, and makes us feel it within the story and, because that story exposes fears of the past and the present and the constant, beyond.

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