First, there was the Korean “Emergency Declaration”, which had a bunch of passengers trapped onboard a plane with a bioterrorist weapon.
Then you have “Fall”, in which two adrenaline junkies get trapped atop a 600m-tall television tower with no way down.
Now there’s “Beast”, where the main characters are trapped inside a vehicle in the middle of the African savannah thanks to a feral lion lurking outside.
It’s clearly a trend in the movie world for people to get caught in all sorts of precarious – and often ludicrous – positions. This time, though, the characters are in luck: the hero of the story is Idris Elba, a man who can certainly make anyone purr!
“Beast” is not director Baltasar Kormákur’s first tango with the survival-film genre. The Icelandic filmmaker helmed “Everest” in 2015 and “Adrift” in 2018, which similarly featured characters in life-or-death situations.
Here, Elba plays Nathaniel Samuels – Nate for short – a doctor who recently lost his ex-wife to cancer. Grieving their loss, he decides to bring his daughters Meredith (Iyana Halley) and Norah (Leah Jeffries) on a vacation to South Africa, from where their mum hailed.
There, they meet up with Martin (Sharlto Copley), an old friend of Nate’s and a wildlife biologist who shows them all the sights the savannah has to offer. But their trip goes awry, which is quite the understatement, when they cross paths with the fearsome big cat.
With their vehicle stranded and no help in sight, it becomes a battle of wits and strength between a desperate man and one of Africa’s most dangerous predators. Since the lion is unnamed in the film, let’s call him Alex.
Oh, Alex
“Beast” is not much of a big-gamechanger of the genre, and doesn’t even pretend to be one. In fact, it plays to cheesiness at points, what with Alex singlehandedly (singlepawedly?) taking out an entire posse of armed poachers.
The ferocious feline is surprisingly sentient and seemingly unstoppable, hellbent on killing any human it sees. Of course, no one is able to shoot at it directly, and even setting it on fire only leaves it with a mild sunburn.
As revealed in the opening scene, there’s a reason for Alex’s anti-human vendetta. Turns out, massacring anyone’s family is enough to make them go on a mad, murderous rampage.
“It’s the law of the jungle. And that’s the only law that applies around here,” as Martin puts it. Shut up, Martin.
While Alex murders every human being with extreme prejudice, viewers are left to witness the family drama between a father and his girls.
Meredith, in particular, is convinced her dad didn’t truly care about their mum and abandoned them during their greatest time of need. Hence, with Alex knocking on their window, the girl has to learn to trust her father, who definitely goes all out to protect his loved ones.
Still, it can’t be easy when you have two daughters who do particularly stupid things, such as not staying put when told, and contacting Dad via walkie-talkie just as he’s trying to hide from a crazed killer cat! Sigh.
It’s probably not a spoiler to reveal that the film climaxes with man and beast duking it out. Those who have ever doubted Elba’s ability to play James Bond may now stay silent or revel in being proven right… really, it can go either way.
For the curious and concerned, no actual lions were used in the making of the film. For all intents and purposes, the computer-generated creation that is Alex does its job well, making enough of an appearance to leave the audience jittery without overstaying its welcome to make its physical flaws more obvious.
At the end of the day, “Beast” does try to make a statement about the wildlife trade, the evils of poaching, and the bloody consequences of human greed. But it’ll probably be best remembered as the film where Idris Elba comes to blows with a CGI lion.
‘Beast’ is screening in cinemas nationwide.