More Than Just A ‘monster’ Movie

Baltasar Kormákur has a reputation for survival movies, pitting his actors against the natural world. In Everest, it was the mightiest mountain the world, in Adrift it was the Pacific Ocean.

But in Beast, his hero comes up against a relentless enemy with four legs — a giant, rogue lion — and the director sees it as much more than just an old fashioned monster movie.

The film stars Luther’s Idris Elba as a recently widowed father on holiday with his daughters on a South African game reserve.

After poachers kill a group of lions, the lone survivor is an enormous male, which starts attacking every human it sees, including Elba and his family. It pursues them mercilessly, eventually leading to a one-on-one showdown between man and beast….