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| Courtesy of Universal Pictures |
Remember Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur, known as the dependable
survival-adventure guy for such fare as The Deep? I’ll bet you can’t forget his downright
depressing IMAX 3D dramatization of the Everest disaster and more
recently the survival thriller Adrift.
Well he’s back with the Idris Elba starring South African set animal-attack
thriller Beast, a predictable but otherwise tense actioner that feels a
bit like The Ghost in the Darkness by way of The Shallows as a
lion attack film that’s exhilarating on paper but our awareness of the computer
generated visual effects tends to work against our suspension of disbelief. For as high as the stakes are in this, there
will never be anything as frightening as sitting through Noel Marshall’s very
real lions-mauling-humans quasi shock-doc flick Roar.
Widowed Dr. Nate Samuels (Idris Elba) takes a trip with his
two daughters Meredith (Iyana Halley) and Norah (Leah Sava Jeffries) to South
Africa, where he originally met his wife, to a secluded but beautiful game
reserve managed by longtime family friend and wildlife biologist Martin Battles
(Sharlto Copley).
Intending to take the
kids on a trip down memory lane with family roots while admiring the scenic beauty
and wild animals frolicking the grounds, their idyllic vacation is interrupted
when they make a horrific discovery of a poacher village littered with bodies
massacred by what appears to be by a wild animal. Within minutes of finding the site, the four
find themselves being hunted down by a bloodthirsty man-eating lion killing
every human it comes into contact with.
Based on an original idea by Jaime Primak Sullivan and
scripted by Ryan Engle, Beast is a visually beautiful action-adventure
thriller pitting man against wild animal in a battle for survival of the
fittest that we’ve seen many times over and likely will see again years down
the line. Mostly a vehicle for Idris
Elba and Sharlto Copley to carry the film with some startlingly strong
performances from its child actors, much of it takes place in real time with
Elba and Copley working systematically to evade and fight the hungry big cat. In motion it looks pretty good but looking at
shots of the lion frame-by-frame online again reveal the limitations of making
an animal attack film with almost total reliance on computers.
Visually the film looks great thanks to legendary The
Bear cinematographer Philippe Rousselot with sharp fast cutting by Requiem
for a Dream editor Jay Rabinowitz and the score by Gravity composer
Steven Price is a serviceable dose of terrifying energy. The South African locations as well as the provinces
of Limpopo and Cape Town look splendid onscreen though much of the film is
boxed inside a car with the four main characters hiding from the hungry Beast
lurking about.
Idris Elba remains a
solid leading male actor who gives the film a much-needed physical energy of an
already formidable man forced to go toe to toe with an even more ferocious wild
animal though there were times when some of the man vs lion sequences echoed
the now infamous bear scene early on in Innaritu’s The Revenant.
If you like a good solid old-fashioned animal-attack
thriller, Beast delivers the goods if you can suspend your disbelief at
the sight of a rather cartoony looking lion doing battle with Idris Elba. As an action adventure film it is pretty good
though if I had to choose again I’d sooner return to The Shallows which
like this film had its silly contrivances and CG shark but nevertheless felt
like a real ordeal compared to Beast.
If nothing else, it’ll make you want to go back and rent The Ghost
and the Darkness which still manages to pack a punch as a quintessential
man against big-cats action-horror movie.
--Andrew Kotwicki
