Beast keeps you guessing
Beast (M, 107mins) Directed by Michael Pearce. Reviewed by James Croot ★★★★
Amember of the local choir and a historical guide for tourists, Jersey resident Moll Huntford (Jessie Buckley) has always been considered special.
She thinks it might be for striking ginger-haired looks but, as her mother says at her 26th birthday party, it’s because she’s ‘‘someone we can all rely on’’.
But Moll is a troubled soul. And when her sister announces that she’s expecting twins and the attention shifts off her, she deliberately cuts her hand and storms off into the night.
After an evening of dancing and carousing, Moll’s walk home is interrupted by the attentions of an amorous stranger. Attacking her, he is only dissuaded by a gunwielding stranger.
Patching her up, ‘‘craftsman’’ Pascal Renouf (Johnny Flynn) offers Moll a lift home, which she eagerly accepts.
The pair don’t get far though before they are stopped by the cops who want to quiz Pascal about a series of abductions and murders in the area over the past few years.
However, Moll is undeterred by either that incident or her family’s concerns about her new friend, attempting to find any excuse to be in his orbit.
As their relationship deepens though, even she begins to have doubts about his actions and motives.
Writer-director Michael Pearce’s debut feature is a chilling little thriller reminiscent of recent low-key contemporary horrors like Raw, Get Out and the little-seen
In Fear.
This story owes much to its very specific location (a windswept Channel Island), tension between generations and two terrific central performances.
Flynn (Song One and currently on the small screen in Vanity Fair) is a charismatic, brooding presence who cleverly manages to keep the audience guessing about whether he’s a force for good or something more sinister.
The flame-haired Buckley (War and Peace) delivers a memorable turn, belying her background as a singing reality show contestant. Moll is a deliciously complex character, one not easily pegged, and Buckley provides plenty of shading and nuance.
The ending, when it comes, will polarise, but there’s no doubting that in the preceding near two hours we’ve witnessed a compelling journey and a star in the making.