Alexander J. Farrell’s “The Beast Within” has one of the most moth-eaten opening intertitles. We are cautioned about the jostling presence of vicious forces deep within us, which are always at odds with one another. What makes it even more amusing is that this helpfully attributed ‘proverb’ has summarily tried to whittle down the crux of the film’s tussle into a lump of derivative, lazy internal tension. The film makes valiant efforts at amping up suspense and trepidation at fixed intervals throughout the narrative, but most attempts land as flat, tepid, and stubbornly unconvincing. The setting is a generic puddle, as is the forceful litany to explain it all away when a character opens up.
It is not essential that monster narratives, as this one is, boil down all the uncanny twists of the earthly and temporal into something that’s smoothly coherent and fully explainable. But there should be scraps of well-rounded, sharp world-building that we can clasp onto as we enter the murky narrative, where strange things can happen. The storytelling requires a certain conviction and chiseled voice of its own, which is capable of richly grounding the conflicts that besiege its characters due to eccentrically recalibrated circumstances. These are key virtues that would have made “The Beast Within” accrue a persuasiveness of its own, but they are wholly lacking.
As thinly etched and cursory as the setting is, none of the characters have any personality or the fizz of interpersonal dynamics that makes stuff compelling to watch. The ten-year-old Willow (Caoilinn Springall) can sense her parents and grandfather are hiding something damning from her. From the corners of shut doors, what is held back from the girl eventually does make its way to her. Every morning, her father (Kit Harington) is nursed back into convalescence by her mother (Ashleigh Cummings). Willow’s grandfather is greatly opposed to these regular troubles in the household, nevertheless her mother requests for patience and understanding.
The problem with the characters is that they all are painted in broad strokes. The mother is the stock, hapless type who has to wrestle with the aftermath of marrying a man with a dark secret that threatens to rip the family apart. The father, of course, wants to be perceived as someone beyond that discomfiting aspect of his identity and bodily metamorphosis that everyone around him would have him tuck out of clear view. He might also have a terrible temper issue, which does burst out in revealing, horrifying glimpses. That these aren’t just spillovers from his night-time avatar but intricately contiguous with his holistic self is amply hinted at.
Yes, there are the two warring selves, as the opening intertitle underlined. Maybe the lines between the two are fast blurring. He is enraged when the other monstrous facet of him is cast into denial and that he should be ashamed of it. This puts him in a push-pull dynamic with those who clearly love him but do not have the best ideas of how to tackle him.
“The Beast Within” wades into a full-blown father-daughter track. When Willow’s father shares his secret with her in the woods, a connection between them kindles as she finally reposes trust in him, who had otherwise mostly been a shadowy figure to her. Harington dials up the impassioned vulnerability in his big monologue. The father makes the daughter take the oath that she will always protect her family. Naturally, this has loaded connotations. How can she protect it entirely when the heart of it is mired in sundering potentially lethal edges?
Unfortunately, the tragedy and ache that teem within the dilemma are barely squeezed out. Instead, there is a string of plodding scenes written and executed with little imagination or white-knuckle dread, even one where the girl discovers, to her horror, that the other side of her father has no bite. “The Beast Within” lurches to a predictable conclusion. The lack of surprise isn’t the main itch here, rather the film’s inveterate tendency to piggyback on tame, risk-free and simpleminded choices is a juddering disappointment.
