Beast

I know when the trailer came out, we were all thinking of the GOOD 90s flick with lions in it, but, sorry, this is not The Ghost and the Darkness.

While this isnt in the same league, I am going to be honest and say I really enjoyed it. Its pretty entertaining, decent cinematography, good background music, half way decent jumpscares and thrilling scenes, overall I got a good evening out of it.

Just leave your brains out the door, because you have Mr. Idris Elba try and literally punch a lion in this film.

So fair warning, its a popcorn film, but a decent one in that. 3.5/5.

Beast is a new survival thriller directed by Baltasar Kormákur, the director of 2 Guns and Everest.

The film is about Dr. Nate Daniels (Idris Elba), who, after the death of his ex-wife, takes his daughters to the South African savannah to the place where he met his ex. They are accompanied here by Nate's friend Martin Battles (Sharlto Copley), who often leads safaris for tourists.

During the safari, Martin learns that something is wrong and learns that a bloodthirsty lion has attacked the local village and killed most of the inhabitants. When they come into contact with this lion, they are quickly seen as his new prey. Now they must hide in the safari jeep and the lion survive its attacks until help arrives. Otherwise, they have to find a safe way on their own before coming face to face with the brutal lion.

With the 2015 film Everest, Baltasar Kormákur also tried to make a survival thriller about people who tried to reach the top with the cold temperatures around Mount Everest. He had made that film a bit too big with too long a running time, so you had to go through the preparations of the mountaineers for about the first half of the film before they even started climbing the mountain. He provided some long-winded moments in this film.

With his new film Beast, with a shorter running time, he presents a more exciting survival thriller about a family that has to survive in the warm savannah while they are constantly attacked by a lion. Survival thrillers about lions have become more popular since the film The Ghost and The Darkness, but with films such as Prey from 2016 or Rogue from 2020, due to lesser storylines or visual effects, they have always been difficult to succeed. Despite the fact that Beast has a simple story with the accompanying clichés from survival thrillers and also has nice, but not always the most believable visual effects, they still manage to provide an entertaining and exciting survival thriller.

Idris Elba manages to carry the film well as the main character, who tries to improve the bond with his estranged daughters after a tragic experience. Iyana Halley and Leah Jeffries also know how to portray the two daughters in an appropriate way. One does have more acting experience than the other, but this is also due to the standard story of the film. It is also nice to see the South African actor Sharlto Copley in this film as a South African safari guide, who knows the areas and animals well.

Beautifully shot in the real African savannah, the film shows beautiful images of these landscapes and of the different animal species that live here. This way the film can come across as if you are really on a safari in the African savannah and you will also learn the necessary information about these areas and animal species. The film also responds somewhat to the current problems of the African natural landscapes and the different animal species that live here. So they try to draw some attention to this.

Other headlines I thought about using are "Rooting for the lion" and simply "Idiots." This movie is so dumb. And this is coming from someone who frequently enjoys dumb stuff. I'm the target audience for this type of movie. Yet I couldn't stop noticing how dumb everything was.

And there is a variety of dumb. The most obvious are the idiots that fill this movie. It's staggering the amount of times a character does the worst possible thing. Don't get me started on the forced family drama. It made me want the lion to eat them.

But the parts that annoyed me the most have to do with the lion. The people who made this movie either did zero research on lions, or didn't care and assumed the audience is stupid. They hope you don't know that cats can see in the dark. Or that cats can smell their prey. Or that cats have a keen sense of hearing.

(Infomercial voice) And that's not all! This lion can almost fit its entire head under a car, but doesn't use his arm to reach. Cats can reach at least half the length of their body with their arm. Also, this lion has a thousand chances for killshots and decides not to take them.

This is turning into a rant, but I can't help it. Cats are lethal predators. Even little house cats HUNT AND DESTROY without mercy. This lion has to be the worst lion in the history of lions. Apparently this lion's weakness is small knives. Ugh. That would be like fighting a linebacker with a needle.

Why not take advantage of the R-rating? This is the perfect kind of movie to go extra bloody and violent. But it's so tame. Why did they CG the humans in scenes with CG lions? It's very noticeable. Why is this listed as horror? It's not scary.

In conclusion... terrible movie. I left the theater thinking 3 stars, but after writing this review, it's a 2. (1 viewing, UltraScreen 8/23/2022)

I had high hopes for this film. The trailer seems interesting enough. Idris Elba and Sharlto Copley are always good in their roles and here it's no different. This movie just doesn't have it. I wanted to like it. I tried so hard to like it, but ultimately it doesn't do its job. It doesn't strike fear into the hearts of men or anyone else for that matter. It does, however get on your last nerve. All because of the kids in this movie. It's always the kids. The kids, as in other films, get in the way. They distract. They do stupid stuff. They say stupid stuff at tense moments thus shattering said tension. As already stated, not even Elba or Copley can spiff this baby up. It's a mess.

You won't care about the family relations in this film.

You'll even feel sorry for this Lion. He has his reasons for this rampage and they're pretty solid reasons. So, go lion!

This could've been so much better.

The bear attack in The Revenant.

The gators in Crawl.

I'm not even going to bring Jaws into this.

Even the chimpanzee in Nope.

Much more realistic scenes of animals attacking humans.

A movie like this strongly depends on two things, belief in the characters and their love and connection to each other. And true terror from the creature involved.

This movie evokes neither.

Go see Nope instead.

I had to rewrite this because the first one was more of a rant with spoilers. You know those moments someone attempts to be a hero and somebody else goes "you're either really brave, or really stupid", well this is full of the latter. All the main actors keep making the most illogical decisions and the beast hunting them's actions also didn't make sense. Somebody said the writers think we're stupid. Idris Elba deserves better than this, even he couldn't save it. The script sucked, tries to hold emotional weight at times but it either falls flat or feels forced, especially from the stubborn daughter. Camera work sucked too, it looked like it was filmed by a regular guy walking around with a camera, not a professional especially when following in tight spaces, it was unstable. At times, it's like those videos of a school fight and the person recording keeps moving around and it's just commotion. It also starts out like a horror and is full of jump scares, still deciding if that's a good thing or not. I however loved that they cast locals for this, because that "African accent" Hollywood likes to use bugs me because I've never met anyone who speaks like that; like some director in the 80's decided this is how we sound and Hollywood still oblivious to it years later. So points for the accent. But the movie's still not worth the watch, it's just a family with really bad survival instincts and I haven't been this infuriated during a movie in recent memory. One of those movies that makes you wanna reach into the screen and knock some sense into the characters.