Kit Harington Is Starring In A New Horror Werewolf Flick, And The Critics Can't Stop, Won't Stop With The Puns

The Beast Within has nothing much to offer except the domestic violence allegory at its center, so Farrell repeatedly emphasizes, spotlights, and underlines it in red, just in case anyone was unclear about what the film was really about. Werewolves might be the film’s supernatural hook, but The Beast Within exhibits little interest in the therianthropic beyond its use as a writerly device. It’s as if someone set a film in space just to interrogate the ‘black void’ that is American federal tax policy.

The filmmakers keep things purposely ambiguous, whether regarding Noah’s condition or signs that Willow may have inherited her father’s genes. This lends a certain mystery to the proceedings but also means there are few genuine frights, with Farrell resorting to some easy jump scares to try and get our blood boiling (although there’s little actual blood in the movie).

The movie doesn't work. All credit to Farrell and his co-writer Greer Ellison for having an angle they wanted to explore here and sticking with it. But I can't imagine The Beast Within satisfying many werewolf-movie fans, and its genre trappings and more serious thematic concerns are blended so haphazardly that any grand points it's trying to make about domestic abuse are lost in the shuffle. To make matters worse, the film uses its final scene to so explicitly spell out its already not-so-subtle subtext that it renders the whole enterprise somewhat ludicrous.

Documentarian Alexander J. Farrell’s first narrative feature is a handsomely crafted, modestly scaled affair that benefits from being shot largely around the historic Harewood Woods and Castle in West Yorkshire. Structures dating back to the 14th century lend this supernatural tale one kind of timelessness, DP Daniel Katz’s beautifully atmospheric shots of the surrounding landscape another. But the story of a small family kept in fearful isolation by a familiar horror-movie curse is underpopulated and underplotted, making for a capably handled genre exercise without the novelty or depth to achieve anything memorable.

Farrell wisely keeps Harrington’s Noah mostly in the peripheral, sowing deep seeds of tension and unpredictability as the father careens between a violent psycho and a loving parent in a blink. It makes his scant encounters with the rest of the family all the more unsettling; the audience is just as unsure as Noah’s family which version of dad they’ll get at any moment, full moon or not.