67
This psychodrama didn’t go exactly where I expected it would. It didn’t go anywhere particularly interesting either.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
70
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.
80
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.
63
The narrative has a gambit that steers Beast into the terrain of a horror film, offsetting the sentimentality of the audience-flattering romance.
80
A strong debut from director Michael Pearce, with a gripping performance by newcomer Jessie Buckley. So much more than just another serial-killer movie.
80
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.
50
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.
80
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.
80
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.
80
Screen International by Wendy Ide
Jessie Buckley is a force of nature in the lead role of this sinewy psychological thriller.