When horror fans talk about horror movies, they always stress one thing. No matter what subgenre the film belongs to, whether it’s about hauntings, vampires, home invasions, or demonic possession, they’re always “really about” something else.
Werewolf cinema has run the gamut from the bloody terror of female puberty (Ginger Snaps) to Californian serial killers (The Howling) to simple xenophobia (An American Werewolf in London), but the latest entry into the genre, English werewolf movie The Beast Within, takes on something a lot more human. It’s been a while since we’ve gotten a good werewolf movie, and while The Beast Within may not be destined to be a classic, it has more up its sleeve than a pair of hairy claws.
After a short prologue foreshadowing a scourge of wolfy violence, we’re dropped into the present-day home of young couple Noah (Kit Harington) and Imogen (Ashleigh Cummings) and their 10-year-old daughter Willow (Caoilinn Springall). They live in a large, rickety house, one of those old country estates that dot the English hills (the film was shot at Harewood Castle), and from minute one, something seems amiss. Willow has an affliction that forces her to occasionally use a face mask connected to an oxygen tank, and her housebound nature allows her to observe her parents’ strained relationship.
Noah is friendly and fun, but prone to sudden violent outbursts, and it’s these moments, rather than the werewolf transformations, that are the most frightening. This is by design, as the movie uses werewolf mythology as a savvy inroad to a much more human form of violence that’s closer to home. The parents’ exploits, whatever they are, are watched over by Willow’s apprehensive grandfather Waylon (James Cosmo), outfitted like the brave woodsman who features in most wolf-centric fairy tales. But this family will need more than that to save them from the sickness that afflicts one of their own.
The Beast Within is documentary filmmaker Alexander J. Farrell’s first fictional narrative feature, and while a werewolf flick seems an odd choice for a documentarian, Farrell’s previous nonfiction films turn a critical eye on human cruelty and the tendency that people have to risk their lives for themselves and their families. This movie is framed as a feral creature feature, but the violence is much more domestic.
Kit Harrington in The Beast Within.
Paradox HouseThat’s not to say that there isn’t plenty of wolf stuff. It’s funny to see Harington, who rose to fame playing the bastard heir to the wolfy Starks (alongside an actual wolf), back in lycanthrope mode again. He often wraps himself in a big fur cloak, as Jon Snow might, while driving one of the family’s pigs “to market.” The movie is also something of a Game of Thrones reunion for Harington and Cosmo, who starred as Night’s Watch commander Jeor Mormont, himself not a stranger to the terrors of wolves in the night.
The Beast Within takes its time spinning its tale, providing an atmospheric setting in which to terrify its characters. It really milks everything it can out of its palatial location, whose aged insides are dimly lit and full of taxidermy and murals of moon phases, guarded by crumbling walls of stone set into the surrounding hills. Even if werewolves are just fiction, I wouldn’t want to know what’s prowling those grounds late at night.
It’s not a particularly fun experience, as werewolf movies can sometimes be, preferring to wallow in the fears of its characters, particularly those of young Willow, who finds herself unable to trust her parents to be her protectors—particularly her father, who, even in his human form, gives off an air of danger. Moments of joy and comfort are few and far between, and it’s sometimes heartbreaking to watch Willow cling to the few sweet memories she has of her family, when everything seemed all right. Werewolf affliction or more mundane but no less horrible human tragedy, by the end, everyone will be changed.
