Movie Review: Beast

 

Micahel's Movie Grade: F

A thriller that is so dumb that it can't even work as turn your mind off fun. 

While watching this movie in the theater, it was hard not to notice that people were laughing quite a bit at the scenes that were supposed to be scary or suspenseful and it was even harder not to join in. I am usually a person who finds it easy to suspend my disbelief, but the absurdity of this movie was hard for me to even believe. Much of this lies in the lion that is trying to kill our heroes. First off this lion looks incredibly fake. I knew going in that this character was going to be CGI, but I never excepted him to look so much like a cartoon character. I would have not been surprised if he started talking to the characters in English. The idea of a lion coming with an elaborate plan to capture a specific group of people, also seems like something that would work better in a cartoon-y comedy rather than a film that is supposed to be suspenseful and scary. All the scenes with the lion attacking people are too reminiscing for much better scenes from other movies to be in anyway memorable and shocking. This is not hurt by the fact that in every moment in this film is completely predictable. From the start we pretty much know how this film is going to end and there is not a single surprise along the way. Because of this, I actually got bored by a movie as over the top and silly as this one. It is sad when I care more about the family drama scenes then the actual lion scenes. 

Idris Elba is a great actor and Baltasar Kormákur has directed some good movies. With this in mind this film should be chalked down to everybody is entitled to a miss.