Leaving its mark

A psychodrama with a touch of the Brontës makes for an imaginative thriller.

Beast is an unusual mystery thriller on many counts, not the least its location. It’s set on the Channel island of Jersey, which debut feature director and native Michael Pearce shoots like he’s letting us in on a secret. It certainly looks stranger, wilder, sexier and lovelier than it ever did on Bergerac. Pearce’s self-penned film – based very loosely on a historical local criminal case – is no police procedural.

Yes, it is set alongside an investigation into why young local women keep turning up dead in shallow graves. But it’s more a riveting psychodrama with a touch of the Brontës about it. The red-haired Moll (Jessie Buckley) is the shy twenty-something Cinderella of her family, dominated by her smothering mother and older siblings. One drunken night out, she is rescued by poacher Pascal (Johnny Flynn), and finds herself drawn to the enigmatic outsider whose past eventually makes him a suspect in the killings.

Moll has her own troubled history but her frowned-upon, passionate relationship with Pascal finally allows her to grow a spine and let some latent tendencies resurface, both of which make for some hard left-turns on the road to its startling finale.

It’s not without missteps, such as excess use of jolting dream sequences and its supporting characters, including a cop who has a thing for Moll.

Otherwise, this feels like a refreshingly original plunge into psychological thriller territory. And in Buckley’s spellbinding, fearless performance, Beast really roars.★★★★

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Russell Baillie