Beast

Director Baltasar Kormákur brings Jaime Primak Sullivan’s story to the screen in this man versus beast adventure. Idris Elba is Nate Samuels, on a trip to South Africa with his two young girls Mere (Iyana Halley) and Norah (Leah Sava Jeffries) to visit the birth home of their recently deceased mum. There they meet old family friend Martin (Sharlto Copley) who runs the game reserve and helps on the frontline against poachers. When they all head out on a tour of the reserve, they make a very disturbing find. It looks like a lion attack but not by any type of Lion Martin has ever seen before. But they all will soon meet him as their trip turns into a battle for survival.

It is clear when we meet Nate’s daughter who is dressed in a Jurassic Park t-shirt, what we are getting, it’s a humans against killing machine in a very paint by numbers survival story.

It ticks all of the tropes. We have broken relationships, Nate and his daughters. Loss with the girls and their mum and regret as Nate looks back at a failed marriage and missed chances with his daughters. You need all of that to get some recuse and redemption. But that, alongside a question about whether it’s right to deal with poachers in any way, are only brief distractions from its main reason for been, a lion led chase through the jungle.

Don’t misunderstand me, this is not terrible. Why? Because Kormákur knows exactly what he wants Beast to be and discards anything that may get in the way and that’s perfectly fine. In fact I admired that about it.

There are other good things too. The chase scenes are well done and the story brilliantly builds tension, even if it partly builds it with the endless stupid decisions the characters make. The CGI lions work as well, you know they are effects, but work well nonetheless.

Beast is very predictable and disposable, it’s Jaws with lions and jungles and less intellect. But it is fun and fires along at pace moving swiftly between set pieces without letting story get in the way. It’s not great, but it knows what it is and it commits to it and has fun on the way.