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Jessie Buckley in Beast

Beast, with a breathtaking performance from Jessie Buckley

Beast examines the hidden bestiality in the human psyche. This grim story stars a brilliant Jessie Buckley in a role that won her awards. Director Michael Pearce also won awards for this film. It’s streaming on Prime Video.

Jessie Buckley in Beast

In Beast, we first get to know Moll (Jessie Buckley) as one of the angelic voices in her mother’s choir. At her birthday party, she seems bored and sneaks off to the local bar to drink all night with a stranger.

Still with the stranger early the next morning, he tries to kiss Moll. She tells him no but he persists. Suddenly a man with a gun, Pascal Renouf (Johnny Flynn) is there. He chases the unwelcome kisser away. Moll is fascinated with Pascal immediately and gets in his truck unafraid.

There’s a serial killer on the island of Jersey, where to story is set. The police think it might be Pascal. He has a record. By the time she learns this, Moll is already involved with him. They have sex anywhere and everywhere. She moves into his house.

Johnny Flynn and Jessie Buckley in Beast

Moll and Pascal do dangerous and crazy things together. They climb the cliffs, stand in the pounding waves, seek thrills. He teaches her how to shoot and she kills a rabbit in the most surprising way.

When the police ask her about the night of the latest murder, Moll lies and says she spent the entire night in the bar with Pascal, not the other guy. The police have CCTV to prove she’s lying, but she lies anyway.

Geraldine James and Jessie Buckley in Beast

There’s something not quite right about her relationship with her mother (Geraldine James) and her family, but it’s hard to pin down what it is at first. It’s a slow reveal.

That slow reveal explains why Moll was home-schooled, why she is treated like a pariah. Her attraction to the violent and dangerous Pascal finally becomes clear.

As the film progressed it became not a mystery or a love affair but a horror story. It takes us deeper and deeper into the worst impulses of human behavior. Jessie Buckley’s characterization of Moll at the center of the story is utterly impressive. I was enthralled by her performance more than by the dark and grim tale that unfolded.

Beast isn’t the film for everyone, so I’m not recommending it for everyone. But Jessie Buckley fans can hold her performance in this up as one of the best they will ever see.

Beast poster

Have a look at the trailer.

What do you think? Are you going to give this film a try? If you watch it, I’d love to know what you thought about it, especially the ending.

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Virginia DeBolt

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7 responses to “Beast, with a breathtaking performance from Jessie Buckley”

  1. Victoria A Avatar
    Victoria A

    Wow – I didnt know what to expect with this film – but it was gripping and Jessie Buckleys performance was excellent. I look forward to seeing her in other films. the ending was a total surprise – there were some things that could have been explained a bit more (her relationship with her mother) but all in all I liked it

    Reply
    1. Virginia DeBolt Avatar
      Virginia DeBolt

      Jessie Buckley was in season 4 of Fargo. You might be able to find that somewhere. It isn’t a series I watch so I’m not sure where to find it.

      Reply
      1. Victoria A Avatar
        Victoria A

        thank you – only saw episodes 1 & 2 of Fargo Season 4 – didnt think it was as good as previous seasons – went on to other shows

    2. Stephen Sossaman Avatar
      Stephen Sossaman

      On your interesting question about the mother, Victoria A, my guess is that she is a repressed mother figure who visits repression on Moll because Moll was a social embarrassment to her mother as a 13 year old with scissors.

      If that seems too simplistic, as it does to me while typing it, here is a paraphrase of what Simon Horrocks says in a video about minor characters: “They support the depiction of the main character. In a sense they are facets or reflections of the hero. They are there to represent ideas, emotions or personalities that conflict with or emphasize the idea of the story.” A minor character might instead “represent what the hero wishes she could be.”

      I would not endorse Horrock’s astute point as a universal truth about all minor characters, but in Beast the mother sees herself as a moral person, and I think Moll wants to be (actually, already is) a moral, good person, and wants to prove her mother wrong. Her mother has convinced Moll that she is helplessly flawed, which Moll thinks is confirmed when she lies to protect a murderer. If that interpretation is so, Moll’s intention of murder and suicide by jerking the steering wheel is a moral act meant to achieve justice by imposing the death penalty on two bad people, justice imposed on Pascal, and atonement for herself. If we consider femicide, or just serial killings, Moll becomes a classical Greek Fury.

      Reply
  2. Anne Dimopoulos Avatar
    Anne Dimopoulos

    I will watch anything with Jessie Buckley, after seeing her performance in the first season of Why Women Kill. Priceless. thanks.

    Reply
    1. Virginia DeBolt Avatar
      Virginia DeBolt

      She’s fantastic in everything!

      Reply
  3. Stephen Sossaman Avatar
    Stephen Sossaman

    I thought I would never again enjoy a film or TV show whose central inciting incident was a serial killing, as I think most British TV (American TV is likely worse) is exploitative about them. But Beast is a very, very good film, in my opinion.

    Spoilers ahead.

    The great Greek tragedies were not about entertaining voyeurs with lurid crimes, and the ending of Beast strongly evoked Greek tragedy for me.

    There was a sense of inevitability in Pascal’s death and in the future punishment of his avenging killer, yet Moll was enacting cosmic justice, while expiating her own past, which was less awful than she imagines, at great cost to herself. Moll is a moralist, never mind what her mother says.

    The day before, Moll slept rough, symbolically in a shallow grave, where she simultaneous enacted being a victim and prepared herself for her own death the next day.

    The screenplay by Michael Pearce was extraordinarily good, I think, and I mean extraordinarily. The script was thematically profound, and rich in the minor magic tricks of call-backs, foreshadowing, allusiveness. This is a serious film that, in the spirit of classic Greek tragedy, brings an audience together to put aside the mundane in order to see and consider the profound.

    That profundity is the fragile adherence to civilization and self-control and self respect that any one of us could abandon, as we impulsively or inevitably commit some crime against our society.

    When Moll is hounded from a memorial service, the stalking, menacing males are at the same time good parents trying to defend decency and decorum.

    One line of dialog solves the superficial answer of whether or not Pascal has killed several young women. In a scene that is one of Jessie Buckley’s triumphs It is not Pascal’s “It is over,” which might be simply a guy telling his girl what she insists on hearing.

    It is his next line, after a pause: “They meant nothing to me,” which he would not have uttered if he were merely calming her down, and which sets Moll on her mission as a Fury.

    Michael Pearce and Jessie Buckley, wow.

    Reply

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