A good pun is hard to resist. Hell, the same goes for a bad pun, and I say when the opportunity presents itself, why not lean in hard with the word play? Critics certainly didn’t fight the feeling after viewing Kit Harington’s new werewolf horror movie, The Beast Within, which hit the 2024 movie release calendar on July 26. Opinions of the flick are fairly subdued, with some reviews saying it “unleashes a monster metaphor” and others calling it “all bark and no bite.”
Kit Harington will forever be remembered for the role of Jon Snow on Game of Thrones, but in The Beast Within, he plays the lycanthrope Noah. The story is centered around his 10-year-old daughter Willow (Caoilinn Springall) who comes to discover her father’s secret. The film also stars Ashleigh Cummings as Willow’s mother Imogen and James Cosmo as Ashleigh’s father Waylon. In the first of our punny critics’ reactions, Vikram Murthi of IndieWire gives it a C-, saying the movie “transforms” into a clunky metaphor for domestic violence. The critic writes:
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.
Jordan Mintzer of THR agrees, saying the movie “has more bark than bite.” The critic admits the premise is intriguing but that it doesn’t offer anything actually frightening past a few predictable jumpscares. In Mintzer’s words:
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).
Robert Brian Taylor of Collider doubled up on the puns, also saying The Beast Within is “all bark, no bite,” and calling it “dull-toothed.” Despite a good performance from Ashleigh Cummings, it fails to commit to being either a strong werewolf movie or a compelling family drama stuck in a domestic nightmare. Taylor gives it a 3 out of 10, writing:
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.
Dennis Harvey of Variety, meanwhile, writes that Kit Harington “gets hairy” in the thriller (and apparently naked, as he also does in his new play). The critic says the movie wants to be taken seriously as a domestic psychological drama but lacks the substance to inspire either suspense or empathy. Harvey continues:
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.
Meagan Navarro of Bloody Disgusting, however, credits director Alexander J. Farrell, who “unleashes a monster metaphor” with The Beast Within, examining the havoc domestic abuse wreaks on families. Navarro rates it 3 out of 5 skulls, writing:
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.
The movie currently holds a 41% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Check your local theaters to see where to catch The Beast Within if Kit Harington’s new werewolf flick sounds like one you need to see for yourself.
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