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While I was impressed by the intelligence and agency of the young women who were taken hostage, seeing how their story progressed wasn't enough to keep me engaged. And, frankly, neither was McAvoy's story. There is simply not enough plot to sustain this film.

While the performances were fine-I actually thought Taylor-Joy was more compelling than McAvoy-there weren't really any characters here to care about one way or another. (McAvoy felt more "acting exercise" than an actual person.) And the whole "horror" reveal of The Beast was...nothing.

Much as I enjoy psychological thrillers (IMO, there is nothing here of actual horror), this is just okay and not something I'd recommend.

Beatty plays a likable man caught up in a conspiracy that seems to deepen with every new fact. The script is unnecessarily vague with any real information, preferring to just keep adding questions...and bodies. But the performances are strong and it's tempting to keep watching to get the answers we've been waiting for. And then we reach Act 3, an extended (I'd say grossly overstretched) sequence where everything falls apart. Suddenly, the movie stops caring anything about addressing the mystery we've been following and focuses entirely on an overlong, near-silent, and virtually action-free "chase." And the ending is a pure cheat: no answers, no resolution, just a self-consciously ominous scene that was cliché before this movie came out.

I have to agree with reviewer dbboroughs who pointed out the lack of tension and scares in this supposed "horror" film. Even the gore fails to elicit anything other than eye rolling, because it's so obviously fake and so comically over the top. It isn't nightmarish, and it isn't dreamy; it's tedious, lacking any kind of characters we might actually care about and any kind of narrative drive from an actual story. An overheated and repetitive soundtrack-not to mention the filmmakers' decision to dub everything-doesn't do the film any favors.