The Beast: A Pretentious Snoozefest That Forgets to Tell a Story

The Beast is a frustrating exercise in art-house excess, an example of ambition completely overwhelming execution. Spanning nearly two and a half hours, the film feels like an endless slog, struggling to present any coherent narrative or emotional weight. Instead of delivering on its intriguing premise, it collapses under the weight of its own self-importance, leaving viewers exhausted and bewildered.

Despite the presence of immensely talented leads, Léa Seydoux and George MacKay, the film squanders their abilities by giving them little of substance to work with. Their characters feel hollow, insufferable even, trapped in a labyrinthine story that seems more concerned with confusing the audience than offering anything meaningful. Seydoux and MacKay do what they can with the material, but they can’t breathe life into characters that are so poorly developed and emotionally distant.

The dialogue throughout the film is painfully stilted, often feeling like first-draft ramblings rather than conversations real people would have. The pacing is agonizingly slow, dragging every scene out far longer than necessary without building tension or emotional resonance. The plot—if you can even call it that—is a jumbled mess of disconnected ideas that never truly come together. There’s a repeated sense that moments happen simply because the film wants them to, not because they naturally emerge from character or story development.

The Beast introduces intriguing concepts, such as memory erasure and questions about identity and destiny, but it refuses to explore them in any satisfying or coherent way. Every potentially interesting thread is abandoned before it can develop, leaving only a trail of half-baked ideas. Scenes feel stitched together randomly, with little regard for structure or momentum. It’s hard to shake the feeling that even the filmmakers weren’t entirely sure what they were aiming for.

Visually, there are flashes of impressive cinematography, but even the most beautiful shots can’t compensate for the lack of emotional engagement. The film seems to mistake opacity for profundity, assuming that by withholding meaning, it becomes artful. Instead, it becomes maddening.

Ultimately, The Beast feels less like a film and more like an endurance test—an exercise in patience rather than storytelling. It’s easily one of the most pretentious, aimless movies in recent memory, and the only real comfort is knowing it eventually, mercifully, comes to an end.