Beast ** (2017, Jessie Buckley, Johnny Flynn, Geraldine James, Trystan Gravelle) – Movie Review 

Writer-director Michael Pearce’s 2017 British feature debut drama, the twisty indie thriller Beast, starts quite well, proceeds fairly well, then gets messy mid way and loses it in the last half hour.

Jessie Buckley stars as disturbed 28-year-old Moll, who is living on Jersey with her awful, oppressive mother (Geraldine James) and sickly father. She has stabbed a girl as a 14-year-old school kid, and been home schooled by mum, growing up as neurotic as she is clever and intelligent. She is a ‘wild one’.

It starts with her birthday party. Local cop Clifford (Trystan Gravelle) fancies her and tries to come on to her. Her mom starts bossing her around. She flees from the bash, and ends up at an all-night disco, bopping the night away with a likely lad. They end up on the beach in the morning, she tries to get away from him as he persists in trying to kiss her, and a local rabbit hunter with a rifle suddenly turns up and scares the lad away.

This man is Pascal (Johnny Flynn), who is at least as disturbed a Moll, and has a similar violent back history. They are made for each other. Well maybe, maybe not. Clifford thinks that Pascal may be the local serial killer committing a series of brutal murders.

So it’s just a question of whether the bad boy is a killer, and if the couple are going to end up together. It is a version of Hitchcock’s Suspicion and Hitchcock’s The Lodger. It is a tale older than time, well as old as the Victorians.

Director Pearce gives it a pretty good gloss, with bleak views of the island landscape in a well-made, well-paced, atmospheric film. The score is an irritant. It starts thumping away when Pearce has already done the work with his script and direction. It would be a bold stroke, but you could dump the music altogether and have a much creepier film.

Buckley and Flynn are both good, but the roles are extremely hard to play and the effort shows occasionally, not surprisingly. As the monster mum, Geraldine James adds a lot of entertainment value to a generally very sombre film.

The script doesn’t seem to like any of its characters, so you don’t either, and that is a real problem. Eventually, they all become tedious, and you stop caring about their fates. It is a film with a credibility gap. It feels like a movie story, not one taken from real life. And that is a real problem.

Geraldine James as the monster mum in Beast (2017).

It was premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on 9 September 2017 and at the London Film Festival on 7 October 2017, and finally released in the UK on 27 April 2018. Why don’t they release movies in the UK at the time of their LFF publicity?

Beast won British/Irish actress of the year for rising star Jessie Buckley and the breakthrough British/Irish filmmaker award for newcomer Michael Pearce at the 2019 London Film Critics’ Circle awards.

Next, Johnny Flynn is to play the young David Bowie in Stardust, about the rock star’s first visit to the US in 1971. The producers have not secured the rights to use Bowie’s music or the approval of his family. Duncan Jones says the Bowie family has not approved film, and it ‘won’t have any of dad’s music’.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review 

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

Johnny Flynn, who plays Pascal in Beast (2017).