Michael Pearce's
Beast was a pleasant surprise, an unexpectedly sexy, transgressive adult answer to the YA romantic fantasies so prevalent in recent years; more than once, this film struck me as an interesting thematic partner to Cory Finley's
Thoroughbreds from earlier this year, though where that film's style is cool, controlled, and tightly constructed,
Beast is hot-blooded, jittery, and shaggier. The less said about the plot, the better - I really appreciated not having seen the trailer or heard much about this from US critics after its Sundance appearance - but could basically summed up as
girl meets boy while audience tries to figure out which one is crazier.
Jessica Buckley, an Irish actress who has mostly done TV work up to now, makes a strong impression with an unpredictable lead performance - alternately strong-willed and brittle, sensual and alienating, and her co-lead Johnny Flynn plays well to the harder edge of the 'alluring bad boy' spectrum. The often-hand-held camera pushes uncomfortably close to both lovers and corpses, scenes of overflowing exuberance and intense anxiety, but quite handsomely frames Jersey's forests, cliffs, and beaches while the score (by Jim Williams, who has worked regularly with Ben Wheatley and composed for Julia Ducournau's superb
Raw) thrums menacingly underneath. All the supporting performances are dialed to a slightly higher pitch, which suits Pearce's desire to keep the audience unsettled and unclear exactly where its sympathies should lie until the final moments.
Speaking of those final moments, for a second I thought the film was going to end on a particularly dark note, with a fade to black on a walk by the ocean; while that surely would have been the more provocative ending, the next few minutes give the audience plenty to chew over in their own right - slightly undermined in my case by the theater lights coming up right as the climactic action occurs. Nothing like the convenience and reliability of automation in the movie theater industry.