Review: Beast

While blockbuster films can be entertaining on their own merits, you often have to look towards the lesser known titles to try and find something original, case in point the film Beast past right by me until I read about it in a few ‘Best of 2018 So Far...’ lists. Intrigued by the premise I decided to give it a go and found an intriguing flick with a dark as fucking hell style to it.

Set on the British island of Jersey in the midst of a search for a serial killer abducting, raping and murdering girls, the film follows Moll Huntington; a young woman still living at home with her controlling mother and semi-forced to look after her Alzheimer ridden father. After her birthday party is upstaged by her golden child sister’s pregnancy announcement, Moll runs off to go out drinking at the local club till sunrise, however her overzealous dance partner tries to take things further than she wants, only to be saved by a mysterious man with a gun.

The man is Pascal Renouf, a local hunter and illegal poacher, Moll is drawn to his unconventional and wild ways, even more so after he makes a poor impression on her mother. Seeing an escape Moll jumps into a relationship with Pascal, openly and defiantly happy for the first time in her life, but that happiness doesn’t last and after a fourth body is found the police start looking to Pascal as their main suspect. Now Moll is stuck between standing up for her boyfriend against a judgemental town, or wondering if Pascal really is the brutal killer the police say he is.

Part romance, part crime story, part mental breakdown; that’s as good a way to describe this story as any because it manages to cover several genres at once and yet fitting for them all. On the surface it’s a tale of romance between a troubled woman and a beastly man, below that it’s a tale of murder and the effect of death on a small country town and below that it’s a tale of one woman reaching her mental breaking point and wondering if she’s too far gone to save herself. There’s a lot of twists and turns throughout, namely that you’re never given a proper answer as to whether Pascal is innocent or not, there is somewhat of an answer by the end but even that doesn’t go the way you’re expecting it to go, it’s a definite slow-burn but all the better for how many layers it carries.

Acting was primarily kept to Moll and Pascal but the supporting cast helped shaped this lonely world, be it judgemental fathers or grieving mothers, the most prominent being Clifford, a police sergeant investigating the serial killer case and carrying a rather large torch for Moll. Clifford’s love for Moll carries into the ambiguous nature of the film since you don’t know if he actually believes Pascal is the killer or if this is a cruel way of turning Moll against him. It’s played well with Clifford never giving you a reason to like him but at the same time clearly just doing his job, like everything else in the film you’re never sure where to stand with him.

I would’ve liked to have seen more of Moll’s family given how important they are to her mental health at the start of the film, her father’s disease is barely touched upon but clearly she’s expected to be the one to deal with it, her brother Harrison (who I actually thought was Clifford because of how little he’s in the film) is a smug prick who forces her to be a babysitter for his teenage daughter and her sister Polly, while probably the kindest to her, is a little too ignorant of Moll’s feelings, instead focussing on her upcoming wedding. Her mother Hillary is the worst of the lot, juggling between passive-aggressive and outright verbal bullying, nothing Moll does is every good enough for her and she isn’t afraid to tell her so, there are some reveals that on that almost explain Hilary’s action but nothing excuses them. Sadly the entire family are basically out of the picture by the second act which feels like a mistake considering how prominent they are beforehand, even to just get some closure on them would’ve gone a long way.

As the titular ‘beast’, Pascal (played by Johnny Flynn) is an interesting sort, initially he comes off as this strange but enticing being, his initial meeting with Moll had him shooting a gun before even speaking but you can see why she’s drawn to him, he takes on the role of ‘disapproved boyfriend’ with an almost sadistic glee towards pissing off any authority figure in her life. While the rest of the film has this ambiguous quality to it, when it comes to Pascal it’s even more so, he’s known to be aggressive and his past involves several crimes including a stint in prison for molesting a 14 year old girl when he was 18, but on the other hand he claims the relationship was consensual and it was brought on by her disapproving parents and for what it’s worth Pascal does seem to be the only person on the island to match Moll in emotional availability, there is something quite sweet about his relationship with Moll and it makes those flashes of anger hurt because up to a point you don’t want him to be the killer, it’s a great performance from Flynn who manages to toe the line of sympathy effortlessly.

If Pascal is really the beast then Jessie Buckley’s Moll is the beauty of this story and even she’s got some beastly elements to her. The film sets up no time in putting our sympathies with Moll with her ruined birthday party, shitty family and a grabby dance partner that brings Pascal into her life, she’s an obviously troubled woman complete with recurring nightmares of masked men attacking her. But much like Flynn, Buckley manages to keep herself on multiple sides, being the protagonist we’re more open towards liking her and Buckley makes it very easy to do so, but the more the film goes on the more we see that there’s some darkness in her, be it an incident involving scissors and a bully in school or how she handles hunting with Pascal later in the film. Those moments act like Pascal’s anger, keeping us from getting a full idea of exactly who Moll is, in a sense Pascal is unintentional influencing her to either find a new darkness within her, or release what was already there. A big part of the story is Moll lying to the police about when she met Pascal in order to give him an alibi, at first she’s lying to Clifford to keep him away, but the longer she tells the same lie, even when presented with opportunities and evidence to back away, she sticks with Pascal.

Coming to us from TV director Michael Pearce in his feature debut, the film captures a very bleak world, through the wonderfully dark fairytale cinematography, Jersey is shown to be nothing but empty hills and endless ocean, the few spots of civilisation are closed off and facing a serial killer. It’s the type of place where everyone knows everyone – or at least thinks they do –, strangers are treated with disdain and locals conversing with them are shunned even more so, if it wasn’t Pascal getting shit on it was the lone immigrant man and if it wasn’t either of them it was Moll for having the gall to be seen with them. It’s why the romance stands out because it’s the sole piece of joy on this island and maybe why Moll clings to it so hard, because for the first time in her life she’s happy and everyone around her is trying to rip that away from her.

That dichotomy is what showcases Pearce’s already impressive style, there’s a subtlety to the whole thing that’s befitting of the film’s slow-burn nature, it would’ve been way too easy to keep the romantic and the murderous elements of this film separate once Pascal gets accused of murder but Pearce keeps the two entwined together to add to the ambiguous quality. In doing so the film invites a sense of unease to punctuate the film, particularly when it comes to Moll, whenever she stands up for her relationship with Pascal we’re unsure whether to cheer for love and worry about indoctrination. It can be a difficult watch, but it’s definitely worth sticking through to the end.

Beast is a prime example of why I do research every year, to pass this by would’ve been a shame because it’s worthy of its praise, it tells a multi-layered love story on the backdrop of murder and mental illness and manages to balance them all wonderfully, the duo of Moll and Pascal create this amazingly ambiguous love story with Buckley in particularly keeping her cards close to her chest and playing out this character in incredible fashion and Pearce’s debut feature highlights a talent for style and psychology that I’m interested to see flourish.

8.5/10