
The beauty in “The Beast Within” is stronger than its titular character. The British filmmaker’s first foray into narrative filmmaking is set within the historic Harewood Woods and Castle, which adds to the film’s overall modesty. Such a setting, with buildings from the 14th century, gives this supernatural plot a kind of timelessness that is complemented by Daniel Katz’s atmospheric images of the surrounding area. But the small family living in frightful seclusion as if they are beleaguered with a generic horror film’s blooming curse is only short of members while being also short of a story so what we have here is a well-done genre exercise, but not something to write home about for its freshness or substance.
Straight off the bat, after a brief prologue that makes mention of a possible familial curse that has lasted several hundred years, a time which is most likely in the last fifty years or so but is foggy at best sits our two main characters whose history has forgotten about, directing their time towards hunting and raising animals just like their predecessors. The film features ten-year-old Willow (Caoillinn Springall, who played the phantom girl, opposite George Clooney, in “The Midnight Sky”), who is an only child with poor sob, asthmatic, and somewhat sickly. She is the child of an aristocrat, the family is both rarefied and ancient but dilapidated in a sense, Sage is stuck at home being watched over by mother Imogen (Ashleigh Cummings) and maternal grandfather Waylon (James Cosmo).
They’re all a bit stressed when it comes to the household’s fourth member, Noah (“Game of Thrones” star Kit Harington). When here, he is a bold, extravagant, and commanding husband and father. His impetuousness has begun to grate on the equally bullying grandpa but there are times when the latter is not around. As Willow discovers one day spying through a keyhole, he arrives home more often than not in a haphazard condition naked, dirty, and bleeding like an animal.
It does not take much for his nervous daughter to come to the understanding that dad, the self-styled King of the forest, loses control during the nights of a full moon. For now, the violent craving can be satisfied with the remaining livestock that Imogen ties him up in a derelict structure. However, his grandfather points out that “He is nosediving.” Sooner or later, it will be his own kin who will fall victim to the next eruption of lycanthropic carnage.
“The Beast Within” descriptor needed to avoid confusion with the decidedly cheesier 1982 effort by Philippe Mora of the same name has not been thought out haphazardly. Elements range from Russell De Rozario’s theatrical production design that incorporates an antler chandelier or two, to the music composed by Nathan Klein and Jack Halama that has the odd folkish tattoo. It is possible to admire some of Katz’s work as the cinematographer, who captures stylized images of “dark enchanted forests in a mist,” much like a scene from a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm.
But, even though the pacing and the performances seem to be in the hands of the experts, neither the director nor Greer Taylor Ellison’s script has enough material to provoke dramatic tension or empathy towards the unfolding drama. The family feels a little forced in their dynamics, with Willow from the get-go being overly cautious (and suffering from jump-scare-induced nightmares) about the type of man her father seems to be. Given Harington’s increasingly long and frequently nude performance, I can see people asking for a different simpler world where werewolf movies don’t require Chaney Jr. or Reed to be more than 2D and scary.
There are suggestions that what’s really going on here is the critique of male domination. However, this line is pursued too briefly and too late for it to appear anything more than a contemporary trend that is easily dismissed. Also, there is something in Willow’s dollhouse and action figures play (possibly, she is modeling what she wants to happen in the bigger chip) that is never properly brought to the limelight.
Farrell is not satisfied with producing a cut-and-dry hypothetical horror film and is pleased with the quality of acting and visuals portrayed to an extent. But the actual concepts that could elevate this above the run-of-the-mill genre film do not materialize, while the strong suspense and tension-filled character sympathy needed to succeed at a lower level never really make an appearance. Of the many chapters in werewolf films that have happened up until now, “The Beast Within” stands out as a well-made movie marred just enough to be ‘barely’ a footnote, satisfying and polishing distraction that doesn’t in revamping or traditional sense leave a mark.
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