Directed by Alexander J. Farrell, “The Beast Within” (2024) is a family drama parading as a horror movie – its biggest flaw! However, I urge you to try this one because it is far from disappointing. There are major issues with the film’s sound, storytelling, and visibility, possibly indicating its low budget, but “The Beast Within” (2024) tells the story of an abusive father as experienced by his young daughter. It talks about the cyclic patterns of abuse and a supernatural family curse, but more of that as we deep-dive into this movie below.
PS: Curiously enough, the title “The Beast Within” reminds you of the famous fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast,” and if you look closely enough, you will find some stark similarities between the film in conversation and the story, albeit in a dark, realistic way.
The Beast Within (2024) Movie Summary & Synopsis:
What Dark Secret Lies Within the Family?
At the start, a quote on the screen tells us that two wolves are inside every person, constantly fighting each other. It suggests that we all have a monster inside us, and it’s up to us whether we let it control our actions or not. The film begins with a woman walking inside the forest in the dark, calling out a person named William until she spots something and stops in her tracks. The sight in front of her has left her astonished and fearful. It was a werewolf preying on a human being. This sort of makes it a prologue to the actual story itself.
When the film begins, we see Willow (played by Caoilinn Springall) in her room, curiously watching her mother and grandfather’s actions. Willow has always suspected that her mother, Imogen (Ashleigh Cummings), and her grandad, Waylon (James Cosmo), hid something from her. Sometimes, they would take a pig from their farm and go into the jungle, where her father would spend the night. Her mother and grandad would come back before dark, and the next day, when her father returned, he was covered in blood.
Why is Noah kept away from the humans?
It is not so difficult for us to guess that Kit Harington’s character, Noah William Avery, Willow’s father, and Imogen’s husband, turns into a werewolf every month during the full (red) moon. The family puts up in a secluded house near a dense forest, possibly to protect him and his secret from the rest of the human world and to keep Noah away from human beings because the smell of blood easily lures him.
Young Willow is curious and asks her mother about it one day when they do the dishes together in the kitchen, but Imogen refuses to explain. She has the appearance of a tired and breaking person who is trying her best to keep it all together. The mother and daughter spend some time alone, driving to the city in their van, and Imogen buys Willow a pretty dress for her birthday. However, during the trip, when her mother is changing on the side of the vehicle, Willow notices the blue-black patches across her skin dreadingly in the side-view mirror.
What does Willow discover deep inside the forest?
That is when we know that Noah is not the best father and husband to Willow and Imogen. Through several flashbacks across the screenplay and the sad, sobbing state of Imogen, we realize that he is a man losing a grip on his human self and being beast-like towards his wife on all odd days. Imogen was trying to brush past the emotional and physical abuse inflicted upon her because she loved Noah and had embraced him, knowing the family curse (of men turning into werewolves) before she chose a life with him. In fact, Waylon knew all about Noah’s condition and witnessed first-hand how it affected his daughter and granddaughter, so he wanted to protect them by sticking around in the house.
To discover the truth about his father, Willow hides inside the truck and follows them. Deep inside the forest, in the remains of an old castle, she sees her mother strapping a completely naked Noah and locking him in. Imogen leaves, but Willow witnesses her father turning into a werewolf, and the terrifying image stays with her for days. She is scared and takes refuge with her grandfather, Waylon, who wishes to take Willow and leave for the city, but Imogen and Noah don’t let him.
Will Noah tell Willow about their family curse?
Noah soon realizes that it is time to let his daughter in on the family curse, so when the father-daughter goes to the forest to cut wood, Noah tells Willow about the family curse that has been passed down from generation to family. His grandfather kept it a secret from his grandmother, but one night, she followed him into the woods during the full moon, and the werewolf killed her. Noah’s grandfather, horrified by what he had done, shot himself.
This hints at the prologue scene. Noah’s father has suffered from the trauma of his father’s werewolf curse, and all this has shaped Noah’s personality—a generally creepy and unlikable man with temper issues and a tendency to inflict harm upon his family. Something tells me that the family curse is beyond the supernatural; it is the pattern of toxicity that gets inherited among the men in the family due to their childhood experiences.
Why does Noah argue with Imogen?
The more we see Noah talking with his daughter and wife, the clearer it becomes that he is an insecure man. He is afraid of losing the people he loves, which almost drives him to paranoia and possessiveness. For example, on the day the father-daughter duo goes collecting wood in the forest, Noah accidentally finds his wife’s dress under the truck’s driver seat. Imogen wore the same dress when she took Willow to the city.
Even in his human form, Noah has heightened senses, so when he sniffs it, he detects a man’s scent. From whatever we know of that outing, it isn’t clear that Imogen was seeing someone else. Still, Noah’s belief (and anger) is strong, so they immediately return home, and Willow witnesses his parents arguing. Noah is possibly even physically abusive towards Imogen during this episode. The question does arise: how will these experiences shape Willow?
Is ‘The Beast Within’ a Werewolf Movie?
Yes, “The Beast Within” (2024) is a werewolf movie. However, the supernatural element is rarely displayed, except in the film’s last few minutes (possibly due to budget constraints). The hint of a werewolf lurking in the forest and around the house is made palpable throughout the film. Kit Harrington’s character, Noah, is the werewolf here who changes into this form every month on the full moon. However, the film focuses more on the inner beast (say, a werewolf) that resides in Noah, whom he cannot keep a check on even when he is with his loved ones.
What is ‘The Beast Within’ About?
“The Beast Within” (2024) is a family drama in the garb of a supernatural horror movie. It revolves around Noah and his family, where Noah turns into a werewolf once a month on a full moon night. However, the film focuses on the systems of abuse that he inflicts upon his wife and daughter, who appear to be constantly terrified of his effervescent temper. The film focuses more on Noah’s daughter, Willow’s experience of her father’s beastly and human moods and stresses the importance of trying to break free from abuse in small but desperate ways.
Is Noah Dead or Alive in the End?
In the film’s climactic scene, young Willow is seen setting the werewolf form of Noah on fire, indicating that Noah has been burnt to death. However, since a literal supernatural element resides in Noah, we aren’t entirely sure if the fire would kill him. The final scenes hint that Imogen and Willow are preparing to leave Noah’s house once and for all, so they have likely been set free from Noah’s grasp. We are unsure how Noah’s manipulative final words will affect Willow as she grows into a lady. Still, the effect of his abusive patterns is likely to linger upon Willow and Imogen for a lifetime.
Why did Noah Attack his Wife?
Noah has a beast residing in him – a werewolf – as part of a family curse. However, he seems to be starting to lose his grip on reality, letting the beast out and attacking Imogen at odd hours. He raised his voice and possibly his hand on her multiple times. In the film’s final scenes, Noah attacks his wife because she had hinted some time ago, during a moment of carefree family time, that she loved him when he wasn’t acting like a monster. It had riled Noah up then, and even in his beast form on the final full moon night, it made him lose his temper towards her, thinking that she would leave him sooner or later. So, he injures her gravely.
The Beast Within (2024) Movie Ending Explained:
Can Imogen and Willow Survive the Night?
All these events transpire before the next full moon, and Noah becomes more unstable. On the designated night, when he transforms into the werewolf again, he cannot stop at the animal sacrifice. Instead, he breaks free from the chains and rushes home to take revenge on Waylon and Imogen. Insecure, Noah had convinced himself that they were possibly trying to take Willow away from him, so he storms into his own house to protect his family.
Waylon quickly realizes that it is not the strong winds of a storm trying to beat down their main gate; it is Noah, the werewolf. He tries to hide Imogen and a now passed-out Willow. Noah storms into the house and attacks and injures Waylon. He then looks for Imogen and Willow, who scramble to escape the house. Waylon shuts them out of the house while the duo runs for their lives into the forest.
Is the Curse Truly Broken?
Soon, they realize that the forest is Noah’s territory, and he catches up with them, abducting Willow to the worn-down castle in the woods, where he shape-shifts into a werewolf every month. Imogen reaches the place and tries calming Noah down, telling him to return to his senses and not harm them. Noah experiences flashbacks of blissful family times and is only starting to calm down when he suddenly remembers the moment when Imogen accidentally said, “I love you when you are like this,” meaning Noah wasn’t acting like a monster.
An unstable man, Noah took offense to this, possibly believing it confirmed his suspicion that she would leave him sooner or later. After all, for Noah, the werewolf, nothing mattered more than his own insecurities. The attack is grave, and Imogen struggles to pull herself up on her feet. Willow tries to protect her mother. A patient with some respiratory disorder, Willow always functioned with an oxygen mask on her nose and carried a tank of oxygen everywhere. She uses this tank to set fire to her werewolf father, possibly ending the monster that had terrorized her and her mother for so many years now. Noah is possibly dead, but we are left to wonder if the family curse also ends with him.
Will Willow Embrace or Reject Her Destiny?
In the next scene, we see Willow reading the book White Fang by Jack London and using her father’s picture as a bookmark. The book is an English classic that helps its readers perceive London from the perspective of its titular canine character, suggesting that maybe Willow was trying to understand her father’s psyche and worldview better. She doesn’t seem to despise him. However, she hesitates when her mother calls for her before setting out for the city.
The family curse is still alive, and the person to inherit the same would be her after her father. She goes back in time to the night of the attack when her father called himself a monster and told her that she, too, was a little monster, hinting that the curse would fall upon her after him. The hesitation may be because she was afraid of carrying the possible seeds of the monster in herself to the city, or it can be read as a general sign of her being unsure of stepping out of this life and looking into the future, knowing fully well that the family curse would chase her wherever she went.
