Beast Movie Review scored a 5 out of 5 hatchets from Horror Author, A.R. Braun.

This film is not to be confused with The Beast, which came out in 1975–a shocking, excellent horror film—but the 2017 movie has a great story and character arc, plus a strong plot.

Teenager Moll (Jessie Buckley), a tour guide and troubled girl, is looking for meaning in life. She has a reputation, for she stabbed another student when in high school. If she’s not under attack from her controlling mother, Hilary (Geraldine James), she’s being upstaged at her birthday party. I know the feeling well—it’s always about someone else—so I can relate to her. Her sister, Polly (Shannon Target), tells everyone at the party that she and her husband are going to have a baby. Big deal. Save it for the dinner table.

That night, Moll says screw that and goes clubbing. She meets a young man there and dances the night away. When the sun comes up, the boy makes his move, and when she tells him she just wants to go home, he tries to rape her.

Enter Pascal (Johnny Flynn), a bad boy who champions her, holding a gun on the rapist, who runs away. Pascal then patches up a wound Moll gave herself, and bam! She’s infatuated.

Upon arriving home, she’s read the riot act by her mom for staying out all night. Moll invites Pascal to her house to do some repairs, since he works with his hands. When Pascal’s invited to dinner, he stands up to her controlling mother and Moll’s brother, for it was his fault, not Moll’s, that her niece was left alone. He was late picking her up.

Review by Horror Writer, A.R. Braun. Check out his Dark Fiction masterpiece, “66Sick,” here.

The whirlwind romance carries Moll away, but there’s a killer on the loose. And the townspeople suspect Moll’s boyfriend; therefore, they give her hell, even at the funeral of a girl when Moll tries to pay her respects.

As the tale weaves, the viewer has a hard time figuring out who the villain is. Moll claims the stabbing at school was self-defense. When she tries to make amends, the girl now a woman throws her out of the department store the latter works at. Pascal treats Moll like a queen. Surely he couldn’t be the killer. But somebody’s murdering all these people.

Is Pascal a serial killer, or are the townspeople falsely accusing him because he’s a bad boy? Is Moll crazy and the real serial killer (Polly tells Pascal at dinner that Moll’s a wild one)? Or will Moll find out it’s Pascal and stop him, or fail to? All these questions will be answered on viewing Beast, on Amazon Prime Video.

My only complaint is that it’s supposed to be set in New Jersey, but they’re obviously non-Americans who drive on the right side of the vehicle. But it doesn’t ruin it. And I don’t like most movies. This one captivated me.

About the writer

A. R. BRAUN is a horror author with fourteen publication credits, one a dark poem, including “NREM Sleep” in the D.O.A. anthology; “Freaks” in Downstate Story magazine; “The Unwanted Visitors” in the Vermin anthology; “Coven” in the Heavy Metal Horror anthology; “Remember Me?” in Horror Bound magazine; “Shades of Gray (the Symbiosis of Light and Dark)” in Micro Horror magazine; and “The Interloper” in the Bonded by Blood 2: a Romance in Red anthology, among others.

You can reach him on Twitter as @ARBraun and on Instagram as a.r._braun.