Lions and lions and lions, oh my! Idris Elba plays a recently widowed doctor who is taking his daughters on a safari. A massive and bloodthirsty lion, bent on revenge for poachers hunting him, has turned his eyes on Elba and his family in the first Lion themed survival Horror movie in many years. Check out the trailer right here!
Idrid Elba hasn’t dabbled in horror, and it’s about time that we get one of the great charismatic actors of our time to play in our genre. It has been since 1996’s The Ghost and the Darkness since we’ve had a notable killer lion movie. Will it be a straight up horror movie? It certainly has been filmed in a way that suggests it is.
Think of The Grey, Open Water, Piranha, Backcountry, Crawl, or the literal and figurative high water mark for the animal survival horror sub-genre: Jaws. On land, what could be more dangerous than a bloodthirsty lion? SMACK! ROOOOAAAR! Munch munch munch! (roar!) What may be the most compelling aspect of this story is that the lion has a backstory. For the lion, it’s a revenge tale. Payback for the poachers that have been trying to kill him. I suspect that some of us will be rooting for the beast.
I also suspect that there will some poachers who are going to meet some very messy ends. Universal has not given a rating to this movie, and for proper horror, I’m sure we’d all appreciate a bloody R rating that would place the movie firmly in the horror genre. A PG-13 offering would suggest a horror adjacent action/adventure… so stay tuned.
Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur is a veteran of epic survival tales. His previous efforts have included The Deep, Against the Ice, Trapped, and particularly the thrilling pair of big budget efforts Adrift, and Everest. He knows how to stage life and death events in his films, and now that he’s taken is craft on safari, the good money says that the adventure is going to be monumental. Even if the movie isn’t exactly horrific, it is bound to be cinematic and exciting.
If you are a fan of lion themed horror films, I would highly suggest the documentary Roar which documents the most insanely dangerous movie ever made.
Beast is due to be released in theaters on August 19, 2022