Beast Review

Beast is a film which comes directed by Baltasar Kormákur who some may know as the director of 2 Guns (2013). This film stars Idris Elba, Iyana Halley and Leah Jeffries.

According to IMDB the synopsis of the film is as follows “A father and his two teenage daughters find themselves hunted by a massive rogue lion intent on proving that the Savanna has but one apex predator.”

I only heard about this film a few weeks before it was released at the cinema. After watching the trailer and noting down that Idris Elba was in it and that it was also some sort of safari film, that was enough for me to want to see it at the cinema. It’s something very different to what we see every week. I don’t think I’ve seen any other safari-themed films released this year and probably there won’t be any more of them after this one either. We’ve got so many franchise movies these days as well, so this is something very different.

Unfortunately, it’s not super different to some movies you may have seen in the past. What this movie is, is a movie where a family goes out on a safari as they try to holiday in Africa. They get attacked by some lion that has gone mad and is killing everything in sight. This film is basically like Jaws (1975) or any film released since that’s got a similar storyline where an animal hunts the film’s central characters. Is that a bad thing though? I don’t think it is really. Whilst the story is something some may have experienced before in a similar film, there’s no reason you can’t have a great time watching Beast. I found it quite entertaining. The lion is ferocious, it’s dangerous and it’s a mad animal and humans just don’t stand a chance against it out in the open.

The action scenes in this film are decent. There are a lot of moments in it where things will go quiet, you as the audience member will know the lion is there somewhere, but the characters in the movie won’t and at times it’s fun watching them all get pounced on, one by one. The lion is CGI and it’s decent. There are a few moments where it looked to be not the greatest use of CGI, but it’s decent in the film where it counts.

As far as the performances though, Idris Elba is the main draw here and he is very good. The rest of the actors don’t really stand out to me, but there’s nothing wrong with them either.

Overall Beast is enjoyable because it’s different. I like the safari setting and having Idris Elba there is good as well. The action is decent and the story is somewhat satisfying. The film is good, I left the cinema thinking, wow, that was a nice time! It’s not a bad movie to watch. If you’re looking for an action film and don’t want to go to the cinema to see the usual gun/fist fight action that we usually get to see and instead want to see an all-American family go up against a mad lion in a safari adventure, then this is for you this week!

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