Spoilers prefer their food cooked.

I like to see a classic tale reinvented for modern times as much as the next person. There’s no spoilers here that you haven’t seen from the title, the trailer or even the description of this film. That being said, the film does wait to show us the actual titular beast involved, and sort of sidesteps into this dysfunctional family dynamic. The only thing that changes is the point of view.

The Beast Within (2024) was directed by Alexander J. Farrell. Young Willow (Caolinn Springall) lives a seemingly happy life with her loving mother Imogen (Ashley Cummings). We initially only see Willow’s father Noah (Kit Harington) at a distance, covered in a furry coat and taking one of the pigs away to an unknown destination. Eventually he’ll come into the picture once Willow finds out the family secret. Although he seems friendly and even loving with his family, Noah is prone to violent outbursts. This specially concerns Willow’s grandfather Waylon (James Cosmo) who is not to keen on having Noah as part of the family.

The film makes it very obvious from the start that it’s a retelling of the werewolf story. The only change is that it is told from Willow’s point of view. I don’t believe this really turns it into a fairy tale, since we never really see any biased takes on what she witnesses. As a matter of fact, once Willow learns what his father is, we easily switch points of view without Willow being present so that angle is no longer used. After that, we’re dealing with a standard werewolf story with a sliver of an analogy for domestic abuse. But it’s an analogy thin at best and contradictory at its worst as the film doesn’t want to outright make Noah the bad guy in human form. It has no qualms in making the wolf a threat to everyone though.

Lightly recommended with reservations. There’s nothing particularly wrong about it, but it is basically the quintessential werewolf story retold without anything new added. The point of view storytelling disappears completely during the second half so there is no flawed narration or biased point of view. Perhaps worth a watch if you’re really hungry for a werewolf story, but I believe there are some other features on the same topic with much more bite.

That will do for now.