The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis

Bathed in a shadowy beauty and slippery psychological atmosphere, “Beast” soars on Ms. Buckley’s increasingly animalistic performance.

Austin Chronicle by Danielle White

The relationship has the air of a reckless teen romance, but this is no Romeo and Juliet story. This is more like Snow White running off with one of the huntsmen. Although fairy tales abide by a strict sense of good vs. evil, what we have here is a configuration that’s a bit more muddled.

The Film Stage by Jared Mobarak

Buckley and Flynn keep us on our toes, their darkened malice turning to teary-eyed contrition until we’re left hopeless as far as figuring out which is more real.

IndieWire by Jude Dry

Beast walks the line between taut psychological thriller and doomed genre romance, smartly remaining laser-focused on Moll and her fraying sanity.

Entertainment Weekly by Chris Nashawaty

Pearce takes his time laying out his sleeping-with-the-enemy tale, but his stinginess with plot lends the film an vice-tightening air of mystery that suits it.

CineVue by Christopher Machell

Beast is rough around the edges but as a feature debut marks out its director as one of the most intriguing new talents in British filmmaking.

Variety by Guy Lodge

Upgrading a sleeping-with-the-enemy premise familiar from countless B-thrillers with a faintly mythic aura and cool psychosexual shading, Beast also sustains a fresh, frank feminine perspective through Jessie Buckley’s remarkable lead performance.

Screen International by Wendy Ide

Jessie Buckley is a force of nature in the lead role of this sinewy psychological thriller.

The Hollywood Reporter by Leslie Felperin

British thriller Beast takes a fistful of tired old tropes — like a hunt for a serial killer, and the ‘ol Joe Eszterhas-style is-he-or-isn’t-he-a-baddie tease — and manages to fashion something fresh, fierce and quite striking from them.

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

[Pearce] gives us a carefully crafted dramatic setup, an intriguingly curated selection of suspects for the crime and all of it building to a fascinating, finely balanced ambiguity in the movie’s climactic stages.

Empire by Dan Jolin

A strong debut from director Michael Pearce, with a gripping performance by newcomer Jessie Buckley. So much more than just another serial-killer movie.

Screen Daily by Wendy Ide

Jessie Buckley is a force of nature in the lead role of this sinewy psychological thriller.

The New Yorker by Anthony Lane

Beast is at its best when Buckley is at her most undaunted, showing us Moll at her most extreme — when she lies down by moonlight, for instance, in the shallow hole where a murder victim was found, beside a potato field.

The A.V. Club by A.A. Dowd

This psychodrama didn’t go exactly where I expected it would. It didn’t go anywhere particularly interesting either.

Slant Magazine by Chuck Bowen

The narrative has a gambit that steers Beast into the terrain of a horror film, offsetting the sentimentality of the audience-flattering romance.

The Playlist by Kevin Jagernauth

Beast takes a storytelling gamble, presenting itself as a psychological whodunit, before pivoting toward a more genre oriented plot. The risk doesn’t quite pay off, undercutting its thematic potential for thrills that aren’t quite that effective.