Beast (2022)

Beast is the kind of lean, muscular thriller that understands its own primal hook and then squeezes it for every drop of tension: Idris Elba, a grieving father, trapped in the wild with his daughters while something relentless stalks them. Baltasar Kormákur directs with a sure hand and a taste for immersive, you-are-there filmmaking, using fluid long takes and crisp cinematography to make the reserve feel both breathtaking and terrifyingly exposed. The vibe is pure survival horror-adventure—efficient, sweaty, and crowd-pleasing—more about sustained suspense than complicated mythology, with just enough emotional grounding to make you care who makes it out. It is violent and intense (this is a hard R ride), but if you want a tightly made, edge-of-your-seat creature thriller that delivers exactly what it promises, Beast is a smart bet.

Beast wants to be a lean, sweaty survival ride with a grieving father and his daughters forced to reconnect while a rogue lion turns a game reserve into a cage match. When it sticks to that simple premise, it delivers tense chases, solid creature-feature jolts, and Idris Elba’s grounded presence does a lot of heavy lifting. The problem is the script is thin and the character work feels more like a checkbox than a gut punch, and the longer it goes on, the survival decisions and “just go with it” logic start to feel increasingly silly. If you’re after a smart, emotionally rich thriller or realistic wilderness tactics, this will likely annoy you; if you just want a brisk, violent, B-movie-style animal attack romp, it does the job.