Animal kingdom
BEAST Michael Pearce’s stunning debut proves there’s more to Jersey than being a tax haven…
It was loosely inspired by the Beast of Jersey, a predator who terrorised the island for 10 years in the 1960s,” says writer/director Michael Pearce of his feature debut Beast. “He broke into people’s homes, kidnapped their children. But he also had a wife and his own children, which is how he got away with it for so long. I found that fascinating.”
When Pearce grew up on Jersey in the ’80s, he and his childhood friends would tease each other with tales of the Beast (“It was the first time I learned about monsters that didn’t just exist in fairytales”). The memories stayed with him when he left the island to study film at the Arts Institute in Bournemouth, as did his impressions of the “duality” of the island. “In some ways it is very safe – quaint and scenic,” he explains. “I felt free as a kid, going around on a BMX and building a treehouse. But by the time I was
16, I found it suffocating.”
Pearce pours all of this into a captivating psychological thriller, as young islander Moll (Taboo’s Jessie Buckley in a star-making turn) escapes her oppressive family into the arms of magnetic stranger Pascal (folk singer Johnny Flynn). But is he the Prince Charming or the Big Bad Wolf of this gothic fairytale?
Shooting exteriors in Jersey for a week and a month’s worth of interiors in London, Pearce, graduating from award-winning shorts, conjures a mythical, menacing world he describes as “a dream reality”. There are hints of British folk-horror movies, gothic literature and early Terrence Malick.
“Serial killers are almost a dated genre now after so many Scandi-noirs, so our job was, ‘How do we make this unique?’” says Pearce. “So it’s not about the procedural pieces of the puzzle, it’s a psychological puzzle; it’s not a thriller in terms of it has big set-pieces, it’s an emotional thriller. It situates you in the subjectivity of the character and puts you in a very uncomfortable position.”
Uncomfortable is one word to describe Beast. Another is unmissable.
ETA | 27 April / BEAsT opEns in ThE spring.