Alyssa Edwards is the drag name of Justin Johnson, one of the most popular contestants in the herstory of Rupaul’s Drag Race, and its spin-off, Rupaul’s Drag Race All Stars. Throughout the competitions, Edwards has given us plenty of memorable moments and catchphrases, such as ‘Don’t get bitter, just get better’, ‘Rigga Morris girl, it was Rigga Morris’, and ‘Beast!!’, which serves as a title for a film that is a terrible biopic of her life and career, considering that the story pays too much attention to a lion chasing Idris Elba and his -fictional- daughters, thus leaving no time for fierce drag queens, and highly demanding, yet fabulous, competitions.   

Beast, now with no exclamation mark on sight, is a survival story in which Elba plays a father who travels with his two teenage daughters (Iyana Halley and Leah Sava Jeffries) to the Savanna, where they meet up with a family friend -Sharlto Copley-. When they decide to go on a safari, they find themselves stuck in their 4×4 and hunted by a lion. Think of Cujo, but with a CGI lion instead of a demented Saint Bernard.

Directed by Baltasar Kormákur -a man who is used to put people in danger and then show us their struggle, as he did in Everest and Adrift-, the film succeeds at making you part of the action by proficiently combining a series of long shots (mainly within the confines of the car), with beautiful images of the wilderness, where Kormákur makes the most of the location with the help of a good cinematography. In addition, we are, thankfully, not disappointed when it comes to the CGI, as the lion appears to be realistic enough even in broad daylight. Despite this, in the acting department, the lion’s performance is eclipsed by Elba and Copley, who are good and believable in their roles, but given they are usually good, that should not come as a surprise.

However, not everything is perfect under the sun, as the main issues are found in an extremely predictable script, too dependent on the bad decisions of its characters (especially the ones made by Halley and Jeffries) to keep the story going forward. The script by Ryan Engle has little to no originality, and it plays by the rules of the genre too much to surprise anybody – and, to make matters worse, the film ends up transforming the lion into some kind of a supernatural killing machine, leaving behind its credibility, and the fact that he might be a distant cousin to Simba.

Considering its short length, it reminded me to Alexandre Aja’s Crawl in the sense that it is a well-made, old-school kind of flick that provides thrills for around 90 minutes, though not much else. All in all, Beast is a decent film, one that is aware of its limitations and it does not hide them trying to be something it is not. Furthermore, it does not waste any time, quickly getting to the nitty-gritty, as Kormákur knows his audience wants to see Elba punching a lion repeatedly in the face… and, he does so, to our collective enjoyment.

There are not too many reasons to be mad at Beast, keeping in mind that it is a film that does what it says on the tin. Go see it if you want to switch off and run away from the heat in a cool movie theatre, and later go get some beers to discuss it, thinking how curious it is to see a film like this in the big screen, and not premiering in Netflix, Amazon or any other streaming service… as Prey (film that I have finally watched and will be reviewing in the coming days) went straight to Hulu.

Despite this, if you want to check something better, go and see -the somewhat underrated- The Ghost and the Darkness with Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas, and if you want to see something wilder than any of those films combined, check out the crazy Roar, film that spent 11 years in production and that has often been described as one of the most dangerous ever made. How dangerous, might you ask… Well, as it was shot with real lions (and other wild animals) on set, Noel Marshall, Tippy Hedren, and Melanie Griffith -as well as others- were viciously attacked. But, their injuries pale into insignificance when compared to the 220 stitches needed by cinematographer Jan de Bont (director of Speed, and Twister, among other things) after he was scalped by a lion (whose name did not match its ferocity, as it was named Cherries) on set. At least, no animals were injured in the making of the film.

Nevertheless, the worst injury is that Roar also failed on its attempt to be the definitive Katy Perry biopic.