Beast (15)

Dr Nate Daniels is recently widowed and determined to heal the wounds of his two daughters, 18-year-old Meredith and 13-year-old Norah. The family travels to South Africa, where Nate first met his wife, for an expedition around a game reserve managed by old family friend and wildlife biologist Martin Battles. A dream safari turns into a nightmare when the family unit and Martin encounter a massive rogue lion, which views all humans as prey after a close encounter with blood-thirsty poachers.

LondonNet Film Review

Beast (15) Film Review from LondonNet

Alfred Hitchcock masterfully pitted mankind against Mother Nature in his 1963 horror The Birds and Steven Spielberg turned fearful eyes from the air to the water with the streamlined 1975 blockbuster Jaws. Creatures great and small make perfect cinematic villains – witness the carnage in Piranha, The Swarm, Cujo, Arachnophobia and Snakes On A Plane – and Icelandic director Baltasar Kormakur walks on the wild side with a digitally rendered lion in his blood-soaked survival thriller filmed on location in South Africa…

The murderous big cat in Beast is the sole survivor of a night-time massacre by poachers and scriptwriter Ryan Engle wastes little time feeding the gun-toting villains to the ferocious feline shortly after one thug examines a paw print and surmises, “He’s a big one. Better get him or he’ll come after us!” However, the king of the jungle meets his match in Idris Elba. The London-born actor spends 90 minutes going fist to jaw with the lion to protect his family during a nightmarish safari that was supposed to be a healing exercise for his grief-stricken brood.

Stupidity rules characters’ actions. One teenager daughter, who purportedly inherited her late mother’s fighting spirit, repeatedly leaves the vehicle that separates her from the roaring man-eater and Elba’s father serves up his children on a platter by allowing them to fall asleep in a location with no protection from attack. It’s hard not to root for the leonine antagonist.

Dr Nate Daniels (Elba) is recently widowed and determined to salve the wounds of his two daughters, 18-year-old Meredith (Iyana Halley) and 13-year-old Norah (Leah Sava Jeffries), by travelling with them to South Africa, where he first met the girls’ mother Amahle (Naledi Mogadime). The grieving father blames himself for being absent when death came a-knocking on his family’s door. Amahle lost a hard-fought battle against cancer during their separation.

The fractured clan travels to a game reserve managed by old family friend Martin Battles (Sharlto Copley), who acts as an “enforcer” against poachers. Nate, Martin and the girls encounter a rogue lion, which views all humans as prey, and the unfortunate interlopers face a nerve-shredding fight against the savannah’s apex predator.

Beast abides by the rules of the cinematic jungle (a hero with a profession or skill that gives them a fighting chance of survival, a back story tinged with tragedy, preferably at least one cute child in peril, a steady supply of nameless, sacrificial characters). Elba showcases emotional vulnerability in between tense action sequences including a claustrophobic set-piece in a stranded jeep that nods reverentially to Jurassic Park. It’s telling that Meredith wears a t-shirt emblazoned with the dino-blockbuster logo early in the film. No real animals were harmed in the making of Kormakur’s picture but our intelligence is certainly assaulted.

-Jo Planter