There are some great performances here, notably from Copley, but Beast often feels too contrived and preposterously overblown.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 30, 2022

Audiences will turn up because a trailer promised to show them one of our most charismatic A-listers in a boxing match with a roided-out kitty cat... In that sense, it’s impossible to argue that Beast doesn’t live up to its promise.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 29, 2022

'Beast' delivers on its simple premise, offering an effective survival thriller; nothing more, nothing less.

| Original Score: B | Aug 29, 2022

It’s partly this hint of emotional complexity, plus Elba’s robust redemption arc, from failed father to lion-punching saviour, that sets this picture a notch above the average creature attack flick.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 28, 2022

Beast is a film that knows exactly what it is and doesn’t try to overcomplicate things – it’s a chase film and what you get is a suspenseful chase. Job done.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 28, 2022

The camera work here is really beautiful and the style fits this film very well.

| Aug 26, 2022

The script is the main weakness, loaded with hoary dialogue and sledgehammer-subtle exposition...

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 26, 2022

Beast doesn’t reinvent the wheel when it comes to animal survival films, but it’s free enough of fat and frills to warrant a watch in the theatrical dog days of summer.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 26, 2022

The success of this film’s eye-catching, ear-grabbing hocus pocus can be traced back to smart direction, near seamless visual/sound effects, tight editing and the supremely talented Idris Elba.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 25, 2022

Again, almost the only factor that allows us to take the life-or-death situation even halfway seriously is Elba’s performance.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 25, 2022

Beast is basically Jaws on safari.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 25, 2022

Whether this was ever intended to be a serious film, I cannot say, but it’s fun in its schlocky, gory, silly way, doesn’t outstay its welcome and will satisfy anyone who has ever yearned to see Idris Elba wrestle a lion and then punch it full in the face.

| Aug 25, 2022

Baltasar Kormákur finesses the tone expertly, delivering a thrill ride that still has warmly likeable characters.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 25, 2022

An old-fashioned, B-movie creature-feature with some CG gloss. Beast is as predictable as anything but it’s a fun, silly, well-made film about a man punching a big cat.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 25, 2022

Idris Elba vs a loopy lion. That's a prospect to make all sane viewers salivate, yet by the end of this savannah-set survival thriller I was practically supine. I am woman, hear me snore.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 24, 2022

A grippingly efficient thrill-ride with such a steely fixity of purpose that its 93 minutes seem to pass in around 15.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 24, 2022

Every scene is built on cinder blocks of tension, but the riotous screenplay is so silly and one-dimensional you find yourself laughing in spite of yourself.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 23, 2022

When a wiser-than-average thriller can more than adequately supply the dumb thrills we require from our large-screen, air-conditioned entertainments, you know you’ve found the right place to survive these last few dog days of summer.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 23, 2022

It's August and we have Idris, Beast seems to say; do you really have anywhere better to be?

| Original Score: C+ | Aug 22, 2022

If any lions watch this movie, they’re bound to regard it as a comedy about the sheer ineptitude of one of their colleagues. Worse, Mr. Kormákur somehow elicits a shoddy performance from the sturdy English actor Idris Elba.

| Aug 19, 2022