Deborah Ross

Schlocky and silly but fun: Beast reviewed

Watching Idris Elba punch a lion in the face seems to be the main selling point

Idris Elba as Dr Nate Samuels in Beast

Beast is, the blurb tells us, a ‘pulse-pounding thriller about a father and his daughters who find themselves hunted by a massive rogue lion intent on proving that the savannah has but one apex predator’. Whether this was ever intended to be a serious film, I cannot say, but it’s fun in its schlocky, gory, silly way, doesn’t outstay its welcome (it’s barely 90 minutes) and will satisfy anyone who has ever yearned to see Idris Elba wrestle a lion and then punch it full in the face. Not my dream especially, but each to their own.

‘Whatever did this is still out there,’ someone says because someone always has to say that

It is written by Ryan Engle from a story by Jaime Primak Sullivan and directed by Baltasar Kormakur, whose previous films have titles like Adrift, Deep and Everest. He is obviously your go-to person for tales that can be summed up in a single word and involve nature at its most vengeful (like, say, the mightiest film in this genre, Jaws. Yet this is no Jaws). Elba plays Nate Samuels, an American doctor (always a doctor, never a newsagent) and grieving husband who takes his two daughters, Mere (Iyana Halley) and Norah (Leah Jeffries), on safari to their South African mother’s birthplace. He wants this to be a healing trip. He’d been separated from the girls’ mother, by mutual agreement, and was not attentive when her health declined due to cancer. Mere particularly resents this, while he feels guilt. This emotional back story is rather forced, but still, what can he do to show he loves them and will always protect them? I wonder.

The film opens with a prologue that shows poachers snaring and killing a pride of lions, which makes you question: who is the beast here, really? But they fail to snare the pride’s alpha male, which will henceforward seek revenge against humankind.

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