Schlocky and silly but fun: Beast reviewed

Beast is, the blurb tells us, a ‘pulse-pounding thriller about a father and his daughters who find themselves hunted by a massive rogue lion intent on proving that the savannah has but one apex predator’. Whether this was ever intended to be a serious film, I cannot say, but it’s fun in its schlocky, gory, silly way, doesn’t outstay its welcome (it’s barely 90 minutes) and will satisfy anyone who has ever yearned to see Idris Elba wrestle a lion and then punch it full in the face. Not my dream especially, but each to their own.

It is written by Ryan Engle from a story by Jaime Primak Sullivan and directed by Baltasar Kormakur, whose previous films have titles like Adrift, Deep and Everest. He is obviously your go-to person for tales that can be summed up in a single word and involve nature at its most vengeful (like, say, the mightiest film in this genre, Jaws.