What was that 2022-released movie about some terrifying, highly intelligent entity that identified and hunted its targets in a way that was anything but human? It might have been called Prey. Wait, maybe it was called Beast. Correct. Both movies (each with an equally unmemorable name) revolved loosely around the same premise. The studios of each movie didn’t do each other any favors with what they could have done, if anything, with the release date. Each film is worth a watch, though I wonder if a home viewing would translate to the enjoyment of a theater viewing. Each was designed to be seen on the largest screen possible.

Beast seems like it would have been a delightful movie to write and see how a director as talented as Baltasar Kormákur (Everest, Adrift) could bring it to life. Lucky Ryan Engle, who also penned both Liam Neeson-led action films The Commuter and Non-Stop, received the opportunity. While far from the best screenplay you’ll ever see, imagine being tasked with writing about a massive rogue lion as a predatory killing machine. As a creative writer, that sounds like a lot of fun. However, a fun screenplay with a skillful director doesn’t always equal a good script. The screenplay was the worst part of The Ghost and the Darkness meets Cujo with elements of The Edge movie. Years from now, it likely will get lump-summed with these films, though Cujo, one of Stephen King’s finest adaptations, will be remembered more than the other three.

Beast is exactly what you want from a late-summer popcorn flick. While it has generated just under $22 million worldwide after its opening weekend (split pretty evenly down the middle between domestic and foreign revenue), it, to my surprise, cost $36 million to produce. This felt like a lot for a movie such as Beast, even in pre-pandemic times. To film a movie with this premise in a post-pandemic world, with still so much uncertainty around movie theaters, with this kind of budget almost seems reckless. But, its 68% critics and 75% audience Rotten Tomatoes score was enough to get me into the theater during its premiere week. I have no regrets about seeing this on the big screen, and at 93 minutes, its run time felt perfect.

Dr. Nate Daniels (Idris Elba – The Mountain Between Us, Molly’s Game) is our lead. He’s on the cusp of being able to carry a movie on his own. He has Sharlto Copley (Elysium, District 9) to help carry part of the load.

Our story starts with Dr. Nate Daniels (and, yes, Dr. is important) and his teenage daughters, Meredith (Iyana Halley) and her younger sister Norah (Leah Jeffries), following the death of their mother after a fight with Cancer, an event that’s onset began after she and Nate had already separated. However, try telling that to a pair of teenagers. With Meredith and Norah in tow, Nate travels back to his once home, an unnamed southern African country, where he and his wife were first introduced by Nate’s best friend Martin (Copley). He hopes the time away from their electronics (most notably wi-fi) can allow the family to reconnect with Uncle Martin, who serves as a defacto safari tour guide in a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I don’t know the point of this particular backstory. It was much too convenient and cheapened the reason for a family trip to see Uncle Martin.

The central antagonist in Beast is an unnamed lion (referred to as one of her victims as “The Devil”) who has taken it as her mission to track and kill the illegal poachers trespassing on her land and killing her pride. Unfortunately, we don’t see this mammoth of a cat until we are well into the film’s second act. But, in the film’s opening sequences, we both hear and see how she can dissect the merciless, assault-carrying poachers roaming the wilderness after the sun has set for the day.

“The Devil” is an exception, as we learn. Before the encounter between our protagonists and this killing machine, we experience (with the Daniels family)  the gentleness of a pack of lions that Martin helped to raise since they were cubs. While still very much undomesticated, Martin has a certain repertoire with this particular group. We learn everything we need to know in telling the Daniels family about the behaviors, tendencies, habitat, lifestyle, and every vital detail of wild African lions.

Martin knows that one of ‘his’ lions has an injured paw. The others in the pack won’t let him get too near. Understanding how to read a room, Martin cautiously returns to his 4 x 4. When the next stop on their adventure leads to a nearby village where dozens of people (including some of his friends) have been slaughtered. Martin determines, after close examination, that they were all killed by a lion. If Martin is surprised when he tells Nate, “Lions don’t do this,” imagine how we feel.

This is when the entertaining, albeit somewhat cheesy, begins. It is a hunter, a doctor, and two teenage girls against the equivalent of Cujo on drugs. The hand-to-hand combat between Martin and The Devil in the trailer makes what the bear did to DiCaprio’s Hugh Glass in The Revenant look like an elementary school child playing with his puppy for the first time. While fun and suspenseful, Beast was laced with CGI and green screens. The Devil hopping on their SUV and clawing into the driver’s side window felt less realistic than a Tyrannosaurus Rex emerging from the trees for the first time in Jurassic Park. While not a knock on either film, you’d think there’d be better technology enhancements from 1993 to 2022. However, I also understand that the budget for Jurassic Park was likely ten times higher (by comparative standards) than Beast.

If you see Beast, see it in the theater. If that isn’t possible, but you are still intrigued, watch on your biggest television at night, with the lights off electronic devices turned off, and either alone or with someone who will be as dedicated as you to experience the horror and fun. Without those conditions, this could be a big miss.

Plot 6/10 (meh…odd premise and challenging to comprehend, though I appreciate the authenticity brought from a creative mind)
Character Development 7/10 (I loved the 90-minute runtime, but it didn’t let our characters develop. While that wasn’t the premise of the movie, there was a backstory that Kormákur tried to flush out that didn’t necessarily hamper the film but, at the same time, wasn’t needed at all.
Character Chemistry 7.5/10 (our four leads worked well within the confines of the script)
Acting 7.5/10 (the daughters aren’t great…all I kept thinking was them reacting to CGI in front of a green screen…not entirely their fault…they don’t have the experience of adult actors)
Screenplay 6.5/10
Directing  8/10
Cinematography 8/10
Sound 9.5/10
Hook and Reel 10/10
Universal Relevance 7/10
77%

Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie

• The Ghost and the Darkness
• Prey
• The Edge
• Arachnophobia
• Cujo