Film review: ‘BEAST’, by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’

The ‘man versus nature’ horror/action film is one of the dodgier movie sub-genres. Casting an animal as a villain simply because it doesn’t welcome, or sees as food, a human who has intruded on its habitat is a little too human centric. Still, some films of this type have worked, the best example being Jaws because it reached beyond the basic ‘nasty animal’ idea to forge entertaining character conflicts, commentary about political greed and a Moby Dick-style theme about the danger of obsessively pursuing a nemesis. Most of these films, though, were 70’s stinkers like Grizzly, Orca, Frogs and the outrageous octopus movie Tentacles, all of which were rightly panned.

With a cast led by Idris Elba and Sharlto Copley, the latest addition to the genre, African lion movie Beast, was never going to be in the comically bad league of those films but better than average acting and production values don’t quite overcome the dubiousness and limitations of the premise.

Idris plays the recently widowed Dr Nate Samuels who’s on a safari in South Africa with his teen daughters, the perky good-natured Norah (Leah Sava) and the sullen Meredith (Lyana Halley) who judges Nate for his absence during their mother’s illness. Nate hopes the trip will provide an opportunity for family bonding and to heal the enmity his daughter feels.  As they head into the bush with old family friend and guide, Martin (Sharlto Copley) little do they know they’re about to be menaced by a ferocious and very hungry lion that has been munching its way through poachers and local villagers.

This is a monster film of sorts and if we simply accept that context it’s reasonably effective with some well-staged attacks from old Mr Bitey.  He has a good old chomp on Idris at one point, hence the MA15+ rating. The CGI lion works pretty well when viewed in the chaos of an attack but when featured up close for extended periods it looks a little fake.

To view this purely as a monster film, though, is almost impossible given our ecological concerns about threatened species like lions. The film attempts to deflect criticisms we might have by showing friendly relations between the humans and other lions and by suggesting that the rogue lion’s behaviour was triggered by poachers killing his pride. The filmmakers seemingly wanted to say the lion attacks were an embodiment of the poachers’ destructiveness. This doesn’t really work as the Hollywood star is still the good guy and the innocent if admittedly fearsome creature is the bad guy.

While the animal demonisation is difficult to stomach, the film is undeniably well constructed. There’s some striking vistas of the African Savanah and some intriguing looking pockets of civilisation such as remote villages and schools.

Idris is solid as always although even he can’t entirely sell this questionable tale of one man’s redemption through lion attack. The two youngsters are competent enough but their frequent squabbling becomes irritating. Sharlto, who’s rocking a Chuck Norris look, is always a welcome screen presence although this role, which is reminiscent of the raptor wrangler in Jurassic Park, doesn’t give him quite enough to work with.

This film panders to the idea of human supremacy but if we can look beyond the retrograde ‘man versus animal’ gimmick, this is a fairly tense, occasionally exciting and at times impressive looking piece of hokum.

Nick’s rating: ***

Genre: Drama/ Action/ Adventure.

Classification: MA15+

Director(s): Baltasar Kormakur.

Release date: 25th Aug 2022.

Running time: 93 mins.

Reviewer: Nick Gardener can be heard on “Built For Speed” every Friday night from 8-10pm on 88.3 Southern FM.

 

Related Posts:

tagged with , , , , , ,