Beast
UNIVERSALThe trailer for Baltasar Kormákur’s Beast promised a duel of the century-type matchup between Idris Elba and a lion. Heck, the trailer ended with Elba punching (!) the (!) lion (!) in (!) the (!) face (!) like it was nothing, a bit like Ram Charan did when he punched a tiger with a goddamn bucket of fire in S.S. Rajamouli’s RRR. That final shot promised a once-in-a-lifetime summer blockbuster, resurrecting a type of filmmaking that hasn’t been seen since Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins fought a bear in The Edge; some will say Liam Neeson in The Grey, but the movie cuts to black when it gets to the good part. However, there’s little in Beast that actually works, save for its performances and some neat camera tricks from Philippe Rousselot, which can establish some form of tension between the human characters and the menacing lion.
The movie, however, makes a cardinal mistake from the get-go as it sets most of its action sequences at night. Here, the cinematography is particularly murky and poorly lit, save for when a group of poachers lights up the African forest by firing their machine guns whenever they hear a noise. And the crux of the movie is set in the dark, in a cramped car, with very little suspense or excitement to boot. That wouldn’t be a bad thing if the scenes were well-lit, but since audiences can’t see much of anything happening – and not just the titular beast lurking around somewhere – almost none of Beast is memorable in any way. Some will defend it by saying that it’s purposeful, to make sure that no one – the characters and the audience – can see the beast, but that’s a pretty bad spin for a poorly lit movie with some of the murkiest cinematography of the year.
The technical craft of the film soars during its opening scenes when Dr. Nate Samuels (Elba) and Martin Battles (Sharlto Copley) discover a village ravaged by the lion. Rousselot’s camera slowly reveals the lion’s damages through circular tracking shots, which are always from the point of view of the protagonist, and never fully revealing the full extent of its damage. The audience does know, however, that it’s bad, once Samuels steps into a house swarming with flies and becomes nauseous. It’s more effective than fully showing what the beast has done, and the way the camera slowly reveals the animal is amazing.
The first encounter is by far the most impeccable scene at tension building, where brief glimpses of the beast are seen before he charges at full speed to Samuels and the car where his two daughters (Iyana Halley and Leah Sava Jeffries) are in. The entire scene is filled with well-timed jumpscares, impeccable sound design and an atmosphere rivaling some of the best thrill rides in Walt Disney World. It’s tons of fun, but it quickly starts to dwindle when the characters are stuck in the car, waiting for the lion to come back – or for anyone in the vicinity to come save them.
The rest of the movie is terribly dull, save for the aforementioned climax where Elba punches a lion. That was cool, but the excitement gets short-lived with how the action is staged. Without giving too much away, CGI animals fight other CGI animals, and it closely resembles Jon Favreau’s dreadful Lion King remake more than anything else. There needed to be more excitement and energy after spending most of the movie in a truck, waiting for the lion to strike. And now that the lion is viciously striking, it’s time to let it all out and finish off with a total bang. But Kormákur and screenwriter Ryan Engle prefer to end it with one of the most convenient and formulaic ways possible.
It’s a good thing that the acting does most of the movie’s heavy lifting, with Elba proving once again how capable of an action star he is and can rivet the camera from the minute he appears on screen until the end. The two kids are also good, particularly Sava Jeffries as Norah, who quite literally steals the spotlight away from Elba in multiple scenes. She will play Annabeth Chase in Disney+’s upcoming Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, and her tenure in Beast perfectly shows that she will do an incredible job with Walker Scobell as the show’s titular character. Copley is also excellent, though his character has a minor presence compared to Elba and his three kids. It’s a shame that the film would waste his talents like that, but he does get his time to shine during one of its better action scenes.
However, it isn’t enough to save Beast from being more than another run-of-the-mill survival action movie featuring one of the best stars working today. Kormákur has already proven himself to be a decent enough action filmmaker with films like 2 Guns and Everest, but he fails at establishing meaningful tension – save for a few fun tracking shots during the beginning of the movie – for audiences to care about its characters. The thing is, none of them feel like they’re in imminent danger, because it’s written in the sky that Elba will go toe to toe with the lion and end up killing it in the process. If it wasn’t so darned predictable, maybe Beast would’ve been a memorable cinema experience, but alas.