by Chris Bakker, Contributing Writer
It’s been almost 50 years since Jaws gave us our first real blockbuster experience in theaters, which means it’s just about time for another creature feature to try to give us a new spin on things! This year, we’re served Beast, starring Idris Elba, and no doubt referred to by some as “Jaws with a lion”. Its comparisons can be many, and we’ll get into some of the things that movies like this will just have to deal with whenever they’re released, but we should also mention a couple of things that it tries to differentiate itself with.
To start, we’re all aware that the success of Jaws as a suspense film is the fact that it hints at the shark so often while barely showcasing it. Beast has no such qualms; the lion is front and center in several key scenes, and while it has to be obscured at times because CGI can’t do everything, it does help to have something to look out for. Bodies do turn up without a lion in sight and there’s the initial incentive of looking for the beast, but Beast certainly doesn’t keep its reveal up its sleeve for long. It’s certainly more of an action film than a thriller at times, and for that it needs its villain front and center.
The movie also tries its best to — for lack of a better phrase — give the animal motivation. There’s not much to it, but it’s part of a concerted effort to say something about the state of the African wildlife, and what a struggle it is to maintain it properly. There are multiple conversations about the poaching situation around the region in which the film is set, and the difference humans make for good and bad across the board. Whether that makes for a more compelling struggle than the fight against an unknown, mostly unseen great white shark off the coast of Cape Cod is up for debate, of course.
So, with the lion front and center with something resembling character traits provided to it, just about all that’s left to do is make a movie that’s exciting to watch, and Beast goes about that in quite an interesting way. Shot on location in South Africa, plenty of the actual wildlife that can be found there is on display, as well as the scenery that provides the lion’s hunting grounds. Establishing shots that do a good job showing off the beauty of the region isn’t where the visual feast ends, though.
Beast’s biggest strength is in the fact that it’s able to build tension to great effect by letting the camera linger in close quarters, and move in tight spaces to limit your field of view. When it’s in that mode, anything you’re not looking at is a source of possible danger. It sets up for that style very early on, when it introduces its premise with a long take that spells the demise of a pride of lions at the hands of poachers, and continues it even when introducing its main characters. Even something as simple as setting up at their vacation home is made up of a lot of moving parts and dialogue while the camera simply follows its players around while they get settled.
It’s this dedication to letting moments breathe in what is at the end of the day still a really briskly paced movie that comes in under 90 minutes that endeared me to it. That said, it’s not overdone, either. There’s your standard over-the-shoulder dialogue in certain scenes, but there’s close to a dozen extended takes that set up a new location, or simply focus on an action scene in a tight, confined space that uses a lot of moving parts to its advantage in most cases. To counter that, there is the downside that you can see actors sometimes simply waiting for their next action, or often filling space with dialogue that’s unnecessary. In addition, the long takes that revolve around the lion are obvious in their absence of, well, an actual lion. It’s a lot to put on an actor to have them act out a full scene by themselves, knowing the creature will have to be added in later.
The positives to this approach outweigh the negatives for me, but I can see how for others it would make those disadvantages stand out like a sore thumb.
In the background of the rogue lion stalking the wilds is the story of Idris Elba’s character Nate trying to reconnect with his daughters after the death of their mother and his ex-wife. It’s a somewhat typical plot element that has the characters go through a traumatic experience together in order to come together as a family. It’s not badly performed by the actors, though it’s very clear the young actors who play Elba’s daughter — Leah Jeffries and Iyana Halley — are much less experienced than Elba, and at times struggle with the way this film is shot. It’s nothing that took me out of it, but I did hear people in my theater voicing complaints about their performances.
All in all, while the premise of the film is quite stock and there’s no immense creativity with the plot, Beast won me over with its dedication to its shooting style. It’s not going to change the way you look at movies, but it’s a good effort at something to visually engage you for an hour and a half, and sometimes that’s all you need.
Score: 7/10
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