User Reviews

Rumour has it that Brit actors Gary Oldman and Tim Roth had a competition to make the world's most depressing feature film . Oldman made NIL BY MOUTH and Roth made THE WAR ZONE . Roth won this competition and THE WAR ZONE is probably the most gut wrenching , bleak and depressing film I have ever seen in my life , so much I'm breaking in to a cold sweat just typing the title . I did think there was something uniquely parochial in that this type of film could only have been made in Britain but after seeing BEAST I do think the Danes are encroaching in to Britain's movies of morbid misery sub-genre

A few days ago I did see 9 METER and that was a rather depressing short led to a nuclear family unit coming to an end due to illness .. It was done in a very ,matter of fact manner and yet remained entirely credible due to its realistic manner . Here with BEAST it plays out similar as a horror film where the only monsters are human beings - perpetrators and victims with one of the victims blurring the lines with an incident involving a puppy . . It's a shocking film , a bleak film and is haunting but not necessarily in a good way . I'm not an animal lover and BEAST does perhaps make the deliberate point that people who love animals might just hold a violent hatred for other human beings but even I found a certain scene involving a puppy distressing and that was before the violence being inflicted upon human beings came to the fore . It's well made and involves difficult topics but is so depressing I found myself wondering if I should have watched it in the first place

I've watched a lot of coming-of-age stories of late for some reason and in this one the tone is a darker one as we see a boy transition into adulthood by finally being forced to stand up to his father's abusive relationship with his mother. In and of itself, this is a fine theme but it is a troubled and troubling film in the way it does it because essentially the violence from the father is addressed by just more cruelty and violence in a way that both resolves it but also continues it. In particular the violent act is the killing of a small Labrador puppy prized by the father. The son confronts the father with a thread to the dog and, when the father does not back down, he dumps in the dog into a drum fire and triggering greater violence.

It is a rather dramatic device and it is one which I really hope is making the point about the cycle of violence created by abusive relationships – that they teach patterns of resolution and confrontation and are therefore repeating and cyclical in nature. At least I hope this is the point otherwise it is unnecessary in its plot device and really smacks of bad taste. I choose to follow the film in this way and assume it is the point it is making since the film is very bleakly and deliberately made. It is perhaps too bleak at times and it has a very slow pace that I suppose is meant to compliment the seriousness of it all but really rather just makes the film drag a little in contrast to the payoff.

It is a tough watch and the point is not as clear as it could have been, but if you take it as a lesson on the destructive nature of such relationships on everyone involved then it works pretty well in a grim way.