The Beast Within

A man his family locks up every night, a fortified house deep in the woods and a girl who starts asking questions. That's what Alexander J. Farrell builds 'The Beast Within' on, his first fiction feature, co-written with Greer Ellison. The selling point is Kit Harington as a werewolf, though while they were shooting it the project was called 'What Remains of Us', which says rather more about where it goes.

Willow is ten and has a breathing problem that puts her on oxygen now and then. She lives inside a gated compound in the English woods with her mother Imogen, her grandfather Waylon and a father, Noah, whose behaviour keeps getting harder to read. There's a routine nobody explains to her: her mother drives Noah away at dusk and comes back alone, then brings him home the next day filthy, exhausted and in a foul temper. The girl watches it all from the window and works it out before anyone tells her anything.

The night she decides to follow them into the heart of the forest, Willow sees what the family has spent years covering up. From there 'The Beast Within' plays two hands at once: the secret that goes back generations and a far more earthbound question, whether she can still count on her parents to keep her safe. Much of it is told from the child's height and point of view, so the supernatural and the violence inside the house end up being the same thing.

Filming began in Yorkshire in May 2023, with Harewood Woods and Castle as the main location, ruins whose oldest stonework goes back to the 14th century. Farrell went with practical effects and almost nothing digital for the creature, Daniel Katz shot it and Jack Halama and Nathan W. Klein wrote the score. It premiered at the Fantasia festival in Montreal.

Alongside Harington are Ashleigh Cummings, James Cosmo, familiar from 'Game of Thrones' too, and Caoilinn Springall as Willow, picked out by reviewers as the best thing in it. American cinemas took it on 26 July 2024, on 115 screens and for very little money, and Signature Entertainment put it out on digital here on 19 August. Reviews split down the middle, warm about the atmosphere and much less kind about the pace.

• Horror
• Drama
• Thriller