Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
A recently widowed man and his two teenage daughters travel to a game reserve in South Africa. However, their journey of healing soon turns into a fight for survival when a bloodthirsty lion starts to stalk them.
Beast is a competent but formulaic creature-feature survival thriller. The premise of a rogue lion stalking a family in the South African bush is straightforward and offers little narrative surprise, hitting predictable beats throughout. The acting is serviceable, with Idris Elba bringing his usual charisma and physicality to anchor the film. Cinematography is functional and captures the landscape adequately, with some notable long-take sequences adding tension. Novelty is low — the killer-animal survival genre is well-trodden and Beast adds little new to it. The ending resolves in a conventional, unsurprising fashion that wraps things up without much emotional resonance.