THE BEAST WITHIN (2024) – A Werewolf Movie without a Werewolf!

I am not a fan of movies which end with a final twist that dispels everything that preceded before it. Done well, this “WTF” moment can be a clever revelation that not only makes you see entire movie in a different light but also serves to tie up many loose ends in the plot. An example of this being the M Night Shyamalan’s classic The Sixth Sense. Done badly the moment will generate more questions than answers and leave you feeling like you had just been tricked into wasting a precious one and a half hours of your life. Unfortunately, The Beast Within falls under the latter category.

The entire movie takes place in an isolated home deep in the English countryside. The story is told from the point of view of a 10-year old girl, Willow, and her observations of her parents’ strange behaviors especially when there is a full moon. All things point to a steady realisation that her father turns into a werewolf and her mother goes through an elaborate ritual each month to conceal this from her. Director Alexander J Farrell films this as if he was making some sort of arthouse movie at an excruciatingly slow pace with dialouge that is half spoken, half audible and script ridden with presumably hidden meanings. Some scenes felt repetitive and the whole thing felt too long despite its short runtime of an hour and a half.

Kit Harington whom we all know as Jon Snow in Game of Thrones is the main draw here. His portrayal of a man struggling with a double identity that he realises is a threat to the safety of his wife and daughter, is underwhelming failing to leave an impact to his complex character. He is also given not much screentime as much of the story focus on the kid and her mother. The film makers’ limited budget is obvious, and I can accept that. Many great movies don’t need to rely on a big budget or elaborate special effects to succeed. The limited location, small number of characters and a deliberate avoidance to show the “beast” is easy to accept given the film’s modest production. Under a capable director, these can be overcome through creative storytelling skills, interesting camera angles and imaginative use of audio-visual techniques. Alexander J Farrell showed traces of these with some stunning aerial shots of the countryside, some dreamy flashbacks and tense moments when our main characters were hiding from the beast inside the house. However, these were too few and far apart to make a difference.

I honestly wanted to like this movie from the beginning, but it just progressed along a path that was increasingly uninvolving, with a feeling like it wasn’t getting anywhere. The film’s final frame which supposed to be its big twist and revelation, felt unacceptable given the way the whole film was conceived before it. Hard for me to recommend this one.