One of the best indie horror movies to emerge from the UK in recent years is Jennifer Sheridan's 2020 film Rose: A Love Story. Sheridan took a classic monster - the vampire - and managed to create something fresh by exploring how someone might deal with a loved one who happens to be such a creature. The film was focussed on a man who lives with his vampire wife in a remote part of England, and has found a way to make their unconventional situation work...until it doesn't. With The Beast Within, director Alexander J. Farrell and co-writer Greer Ellison attempt to do something similar with another classic monster, the werewolf.
Like the married couple of Rose: A Love Story, the family at the centre of The Beast Within have isolated themselves from society and live in a remote and secluded farmhouse in rural England. The afflicted party in this case is Noah (Kit Harington), who in keeping with lupine lore, transforms into a werewolf every time there's a full moon. Noah, his wife Imogen (Ashleigh Cummings) and her father Waylon (James Cosmo) have come up with a solution. Whenever there's a full moon they lock Noah inside an old abbey with a live pig for him to feast on when he becomes a wolf.
The story is told largely through the eyes of Noah and Imogen's 10-year-old daughter Willow (Caoilinn Springall). Though her parents have tried to protect her from the truth, Willow knows more about her father's true nature than they would like, often secretly following her family members into the woods. This aspect made me think about how as a child I knew quite a bit about the adult world but for my parents' sake I would play dumb regarding grown-up affairs to preserve their belief that I was sheltered from such things.
Where Rose: A Love Story used its monster as an allegory for living with an addict, The Beast Within employs the werewolf as a metaphor for living with a domestic abuser. Imogen is clearly psychologically scarred and has been somewhat gaslit into believing her situation isn't all that odd, and she refuses to listen to her father's pleas to leave Noah. Even the danger posed to her daughter isn't enough to make her leave her monstrous husband. The trouble is Farrell and Ellison have made the misstep of making Noah an actual abusive husband and father. When he's not a literal monster he's a figurative one, exercising his terrifiying control over his wife and child. This melding of subtext with text amounts to putting a hat on a hat, and the film's gritty kitchen sink abuse drama clashes with its supernatural elements.
The allegory may have worked better if Willow simply imagined her domineering father to be a werewolf rather than him actually spouting fur and fangs. Noah often play acts the part of a vicious dog in his daughter's company, which seems an odd choice for a man trying to keep his animal nature secret, and such scenes would make more sense if he was only a monster in Willow's mind. Harington is an imposing presence, towering over his wife and child and snapping at the most innocuous statements. He's enough of a monster as a human that it negates the need for his supernatural transformation. Had Noah been a loving husband and father cursed by his monstrous affliction, it would have added a tragic pathos that is all too absent here.
Springall is captivating as a child grappling with the fact that her father might be a monster, but the movie does her performance a disservice by making everything clear from the start to both Willow and the audience. I can't help but wonder if I might have found The Beast Within more engaging if the storytelling concealed Noah's true nature from both Willow and the viewer and allowed us to witness a child coming to terms with the awful realisation that the man whose role is to protect her may actually pose her gravest threat.
Directed by: Alexander J. Farrell
Starring: Kit Harington, Caoilinn Springall, Ashleigh Cummings, James Cosmo
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