The Beast Within Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

The Beast Within Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 22, 2024

Many people find as they age and gain new perspective that there were things about their parents they never understood, and in fact may well not have known much about. The Beast Within attempts to weave what amounts to a werewolf adjacent tale out of a slow but steady dawning of awareness by a young girl named Willow (Caoilinn Springall) who not only has to deal with health issues and being raised in complete isolation away from everyone but her nuclear family, but the fact that her father Noah (Kit Harrington) is hiding some kind of secret. The film has an interesting premise, but it doesn't seem to know exactly what to do with it, and those wanting either a more traditional retelling of The Wolf Man or conversely a tauter exploration of a family in the throes of some (supposedly) unknown threat may come away from viewing the film feeling unsatisfied.

The family dynamic, which also includes wife and mother Imogen ((Ashleigh Cummings) and grandpa Waylon (James Cosmo) is doled out in a number of early scenes which have an underlying tension but which may not provide any actual scares aside from some fairly old hat startle effects. As Willow becomes more and more cognizant that her father is not whom she thinks he is (at least not all of the time), the fear quotient is probably arguably ratcheted up somewhat, but this is a film that actually probably intentionally relies more on mood than on screen carnage. As such, it tends to play more as a slow burn psychological drama than any kind of "scary movie", which some viewers may appreciate. The performances are generally fine, and the use of a rather confined setting also works to the film's claustrophobic advantage.

The Beast Within Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Beast Within is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. As of the writing of this review, the IMDb doesn't have much if any technical information, but your intrepid reviewer found this rather interesting interview with Director of Photography Daniel Katz where he discusses using the Sony Venice. I haven't been able to find any authoritative data on the resolution of the DI, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out it was 4K considering the generally really outstanding levels of fine detail on display throughout this presentation, even in many less than fulsomely lit sequences. The interview with Katz gets into some lighting and filtering choices which may be of interest to some readers, but the upshot is that the look of this film is often rather gorgeous, especially in some of the forest scenes, which almost attain magical realism heights. The palette has been toyed with quite a bit, though some of the brightly lit daytime material at the family farm offers a completely naturalistic accounting of hues. There are some probably intentional deficits in shadow detail late in the film as certain revelations are finally offered, and one very late scene has some minor hints of banding.

The Beast Within Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Beast Within features a nicely robust DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. The glut of outdoor material is utilized to provide consistent if at time subtle ambient environmental sounds, especially in some of the forest vignettes. There are some "old school" startle effects that will confront listeners with sudden bursts of frankly kind of irrelevant "things that go bump in the night", but which do tend to suddenly up the fear factor. Scoring is fairly effective and also nicely engages the side and rear channels (if you want a laugh, read the Wikipedia article on the film, as I suspect the composers or someone related to them may have written part of it). Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English and French subtitles are available.

The Beast Within Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (HD: 2:11)

Note: As tends to be the case with Well Go USA Blu-ray releases, the disc has been authored to automatically move on to trailers for other Well Go USA releases after the trailer for this film plays. Those trailers for other Well Go USA releases also play automatically at disc boot up.

Packaging features a slipcover.

The Beast Within Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Kind of hilariously, I had completely forgotten I had reviewed a 1982 film bearing the name The Beast Within many years ago until I entered the title in this site's search box, and that kind of gonzo outing might make for an interesting double feature with this outing. Also somewhat comically, that film had a distressed family dynamic, though in that particular case, it was the child who might be the monster. This film struggles to really develop its premise, but it does have a palpably spooky mood. Technical merits are first rate for those who may be considering making a purchase.