‘The Beasts’ Movie Review: A Superbly-Crafted, Heart-Pounding Thriller
Photo from Film Forum/Greenwich Entertainment
From Jeff Nelson
Home invasion thrillers distort safety and comfort, blending fear and vulnerability into spaces we deem shielded from the dangers of the outside world. Straw Dogs and Funny Games take xenophobic horrors to another level, which also runs through the veins of Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beasts. There’s no hiding its major influences, but it thrills and captivates on its own terms along with a dramatic punch to the gut.
Antoine (Denis Ménochet) and his wife, Olga (Marina Foïs), are a middle-aged French couple with the dream of moving to a local Spanish village. This rural setting offers unparalleled beauty and a plethora of land to farm, but their peace is short-lived. Local development puts Antoine and Olga at odds with their brutish neighbor, Xan (Luis Zahera), and his unpredictable brother, Lorenzo (Diego Anido), who grew up in the area.
Sorogoyen and Isabel Peña’s screenplay leads with dramatic storytelling that progressively builds its quiet uneasiness into a pulse-heightening thriller. Antoine and Xan’s escalating beef all ties back to their conflicting definitions and aspirations surrounding “home,” thereby interrogating the home invasion tropes themselves.
Nevertheless, The Beasts isn’t so concerned with the struggle for the land itself. Rather, Sorogoyen depicts the consequences of toxic masculinity that obliterates everything in its wake. Class and historical politics also play a part, expertly weaving how this climbing conflict sends a ripple effect throughout the village in unrepairable ways.
Antoine and Olga’s daughter, Marie (Marie Colomb), lives in France with her young son, although her concerns for her parents continue to mount. She provides another dimension to the “outsider” concept, while acting as a turning point in the story that reveals the film’s emotional range in a sobering fashion. Underneath it all is a surprisingly beautiful love story that further grounds its characters and their yearning for peace.
Antoine, Xan, and Lorenzo’s grapple stands in the foreground, but it’s Föis and Colomb’s utterly fearless performances that crawl under the skin. Foïs is masterful in how she traverses monumental swells of emotion hidden behind a tough exterior. Colomb is an undeniable powerhouse, leaving a tremendous impact with every moment of screen time.
Sorogoyen racks up the tension with a haunting use of framing and sound design. Obscurities and closeups pinch taut moments to their breaking point, forcing the audience to stew in long shots of discomforting encounters.
The Beasts is a sincere tale of loneliness and devastation wrapped in a gripping rural thriller pulsating with nail-biting tension. Sorogoyen avoids stepping into home invasion pitfalls, sticking to dramatic storytelling that plants seedlings of doubt and uncertainty in the audiences’ minds, which is where this narrative’s darkest horrors reside.
Rating: 4.5/5
The Beasts hits theaters on Friday, July 28th.
