The Beast Within is part latter-day southern gothic, part monster movie, part amateur-detective film, and part coming of age film, The Beast Within is very well written and very well executed by director and cast. The film contains one of the longest and most elaborate transformation sequences of all time, which often gets it confused as a Werewolf film. While I'll say it's not a werewolf movie I won't say outright what the monster is, except that it's based on some form of insect and the writers did a wonderful job tying scientific
knowledge to the monster and the overall story of the film. Here's the plot: 17 years after a woman is raped on her wedding night by something "not human", her 17 year old son starts undergoing strange changes, so the parents go back to the scene of the crime to try to figure out what exactly happened that night, as well as what's happening to their son. This is a weird one, but it's very well acted and put together considering its low budget. This film was also directed by Philippe Mora, the director of another film I reviewed called Communion (1989), and this film was written by Tom holland, the man who wrote and directed the original Fright Night (1985) and Child's Play (1988). Both this film and Communion happen to be in Rue Morgue Magazine's book of 200 Must-See Alternative Horror films. I give it a 4.5/5, view the trailer below:
Only Christopher Walken could be completely incoherent when he's supposed to be sane and nearly completely understandable when his character's supposed to be batshit crazy, in other words, as his character gets progressively crazy, walken in his portrayal of the character becomes more coherent. This story is unique and very interesting, it's about an entire family (and group of friends) who were abducted by aliens at the same time only to think it was all a dream til much later when they realize it was real. The film is based on a book which is based on a true story but in the "true story" only Walken's character was abducted. The embellishment was an
improvement however, and the film does a marvelous job using no post-editing special effects whatsoever and is one of the last films ever to do so (meaning no CG, and whatever effects you see, happened live in front of the camera). The film is really confusing and I mainly give it a lower rating just because of that, it didn't really have much of a flow to it. Walken's acting when his character starts to "go crazy" was arguably one of his most unhinged roles and was largely improvised (there are dancing scenes with the aliens people!), but his time being "sane" is completely overacted IMO. If you like alien movies I recommend it, otherwise I just recomend reading about it. By the way, this is also the origin of the classic "tearshaped-bug-eyed-alien" look, this film was the first time they were ever depicted as such. The aliens may look fake and rubbery at times, but I felt overall this film did well with the budget they had. I give the film a 3.5/5, this film is featured in Rue Morgue Magazine's 200 Alternative Horror Films You Need to See, and the trailer is below:
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