THE BEAST WITHIN (2024)
New in select theaters from Well Go USA!
Directed by Alexander J. Farrell.
Written by Alexander J. Farrell, Greer Taylor Ellison.
Trailer: https://youtu.be/ctcLCGbeVZA
A young girl named Willow (played by Caoilinn Springall who also appeared in this year’s STOP MOTION) begins to question why her family has chosen to live a solitary life in the middle of a secluded forest. She comes to find out that her father played by GAME OF THRONES’ Kit Harrington Is being driven to an even more remote location in the ruins of what looks to be a castle by her mother played by HOUNDS OF LOVE’s Ashleigh Cummings and bound in chains at specific times of the month that seem to coincide with the full moon. This leads Willow to believe that her father is actually…a werewolf.
I am always eager to check out a new werewolf movie as this specific genre of horror is seldom made compared to all of the slashers, found footagers, and vampire flicks out there. So, I went into THE BEAST WITHIN really hoping to like it. Unfortunately, the film itself feels listless, lacking in story, and trying to make up for it with a not so clever last minute reveal that really made me feel as if I wasted my time. While I really like the premise and the leads, and I’m talking about Caoilinn Springall and Ashleigh Cummings, I feel that not a lot of thought was put into the film other than filling out an hour and a half runtime to get to a final punchline of an ending. A lot of the setup works. Springall is a very talented little girl and is able to convey that age when wide-eyed innocence begins to fade and the cynical teenager begins to show. This film very much depicts the fading of that ideal image one has of one’s father as a larger than life perfect protector and the realization of a child that the person raising them is, in fact a human with very human flaws. This theme occurs throughout as Springall plays a very observant child, constantly trying to understand the complex relationship between her father and mother as well as his occasional transformations into what appears to be some kind of monster.
The problem is that once that shifting in ways of seeing one’s parents is addressed is established, the film really doesn’t back it up with much action. THE BEAST WITHIN is very much a film that sags in the middle as we are made privy to the process of containing this beast within Harrington’s character a few times before there is some kind of shift in the way things are dealt with, causing an explosive climax. The problem is that it isn’t made clear why and how the changes to the routine occurs in keeping the wolf at bay. All of a sudden, the tried and true process of chaining up Harrington’s character doesn’t work. There’s a hint that possibly the mother is tired of the monthly struggle to cope with containing the monster, but since we only see the story through Willow’s eyes, the mother is just as much a mystery as Willow’s father is.
That said, Ashleigh Cummings is enchanting as Willow’s mother. She is drop dead gorgeous with wind-blown hair and a natural beauty and conveys quite a broad range of emotions, even though her motivations as to why and how she got into this predicament are vague. Lending a heavy load of gravitas to the cast is wizened actor James Cosmo, who honestly, I’ve never seen a bad performance from. Unfortunately, the draw of the movie, Kit Harrington delivers a one note and downright bad performance as the enigmatic father who may have a wolfy side. Again, because this film is told from the perspective of the little girl, you see Harrington’s character from a distance. He’s trying to give off a animalistic performance with a grunting and growling, mono-syllabic voice but it ends up translating as goofy and non-substantial.
I keep saying may or may not when referring to the werewolf aspect of THE BEAST WITHIN because writer Greer Taylor Ellison and co-writer/director Alexander J. Farrell add an end scene in the last few seconds which I think was meant to blow the viewer’s mind, but in the end, just left me scratching my head and wondering what the point of it all was. It cancels out all momentum the story had and ends up kneecapping almost everything you believe you are watching for the entire movie in the matter of a few seconds.
The werewolf effects and transformation scenes are limited at best. Harrington flexes his back muscles a few times with an accompanying sound of bones cracking and then, the final werewolf transformation is obscured either in shadow or off screen. Even towards the end, it seems the final werewolf look wasn’t up to snuff to be seen clearly and instead is covered up by quick edits, smoke, and shadow. Still, I guess they did their best to convey some kind of monstrosity without making it look too much like a man in a hokey wolfman suit.
I really can’t believe how disappointed I was once the credits rolled. Before the last few seconds occurred, I felt this was a decent, but flawed little movie with some great performances from Springall and Cummings and some rudimentary, but effectively shot scenes of werewolfy fun. But after those last few seconds, I felt that it was a film that took its sweet time to get to a final moment that wasn’t earned and ended up making THE BEAST WITHIN something you can definitely do without.
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Music Written by Tim Heidecker
Music & Arrangement by Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy https://youtu.be/PDySbxQgZMg
(I do not own this music)
MLMILLERWRITES / MLMillerFrights 
i am really not good at reviews, and i hardly recognize very good acting from mediocre, however the whole point of the movie slipped past you. The story is one of domestic abuse, and how the girl, that we find at the end that she reads white fang, translates her experience or watching this and sees it all through her overreactive imagination. She sees her father as the big bad wolf and has nightmares of him, and shows the manipulative father. Sometimes she also feels the darkness just as kids with violent upbringing tend to sometimes turn on dark side as adults. You see how the truth slips through the cracks sometimes when the father asks mom in a threatening tone to never leave him ever, when she went to shop with her daughter, or the bruises which are clearly not from his werewolf. How the mom pushes grandpa away as the father is becoming angrier and angrier with him around.
that moment u said that left you scratching the head is the moment you are meant to realize that there was no werewolf, but a metaphor for the monster he is, and how he got to be this way from a long line of abuse in his family, going all the way back to the great-grandpa who murdered his wife and how his son was abusive with his family as well, and so on. This was the kid’s way to cope with the events around her and how she translated the whole action by adapting them similarly to the book she’s been reading, which, again, is revealed in those 40 seconds at the end.
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I think we are on the same page. I agree with the subtext of the film. I just feel like after the promise of a werewolf film, it’s disappointing that we got a film about abuse. I think there was a way to use the abuse as a metaphor as well as the abuser in the film. Instead it waited for the last minute reveal which sort of minimizes the heft of the metaphor and makes it more trivial. Just my opinion.
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