The Beast Within (2024)

January 12, 2025 3:10 PM

Ten-year-old Willow follows her parents on one of their secret late-night treks to the heart of an ancient forest. After witnessing her father undergo a terrible transformation, she too becomes ensnared by the dark ancestral secret that they've so desperately tried to conceal.

Oooookay, the biggest CW for DV in the world.

I thought this was going to be a cheesy yet fun horror movie. Uh, it is not. The twist is unclear and hell, it's likely not a twist at all.

Streaming here in Canada on Prime; JustWatch says it's on Hulu and Apple+.

*also, offscreen dog death*

posted by Kitteh (2 comments total)

Fanfare is a spoiler-friendly space, so -- I appreciate that there may have been authorial intent with the authors and director and stuff, but this is such a ham-fisted Drunk/Druggy/Bipolar/General-Bad Dad Metaphor that I really struggled to stick with it (watching with Kitteh) for the second half. It is on its face the kind of thing you'd write when you were fifteen and think you were applying a clever lens to the werewolf myth. And then they don't even have the courage of their convictions to leave it as metaphor and hammer in a double-ham-fisted rug-pull at the end: hey, stupid, just in case you're stupid, here's the deal, stupid.

I do sometimes give kudos to actors when they play reprehensible characters, so a kind of shrugging nod to Kit Harington for taking this on, I guess. The acting is serviceable. The frames are composed and in focus. The understory makes no sense from a practical standpoint: the family is broke but has hand-painted portraits, etc. The set dressing is hilarious in the "their interior decorator is also a werewolf" sense: taxidermy and antlers and large paintings of moon phases abound.

Bah. If you want a good "it's werewolves but also X" movie, head over to Ginger Snaps. If you want dumb werewolf fun, get your Grillo on with Werewolves. This one aggravated me.
posted by Shepherd at 10:08 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]

The frames are composed and in focus.

This is like the movie review equivalent of a line from that Iowa lady who reviewed Olive Garden and everyone laughed until her regular readers said, "NO, that's 'midwest nice.' We understood that she hated that place." Just dutifully reaching for one nice, true thing to say.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:23 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]