Thursday, July 25, 2024

THE BEAST WITHIN (2024) opens Friday having played Fantasia 2024


A young girl decides that she wants to sort out why her family lives in the middle of the forest, and why her parents go out each night and refuse to let her go along.

Fairy Tale like horror film is a beautifully composed film, full of great images and performances and probably enough story for half it's running time.

As good as the ingredients are, the recipe for this film needs some tweaking. There are several problems with the script. The first is that  the promotional material kind of lets it out of the bag about what is going on. I knew what the deal was going in, having only seen the trailer and the poster. It might have worked if this was  a story that was expansive, but it is largely confined to the family so there isn't much they can do. There are lots of silences and meaningful looks.

I'm guessing part of the problem is that this tale of a young girl on the cusp of adulthood is supposed to be a meaningful examination of growing up, but it should have given us a bit more meat to chew on. The lack of meat means that you could have trimmed this down and made a great long short.

I like this but there is so much good here that I wish it were better...that said if you like your horror meditative you'll probably like it too.

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