The Beast Within (1982) Directed by Philippe Mora

OK, so this movie is a pretty original one but is it a good one as well? Not really in my opinion.

This movie was quite disappointing to be honest. It showed so much potential but in the end the movie just doesn't make the best choices imaginable with the story and way of storytelling.

The problem I had with it is that the movie is trying to be a whole bunch of different things all at once. On the one hand the movie feels like- and obviously is trying to be like a classic monster movie, in the vein of the old Universal monster classics but on the other hand it obviously is being more of a 'modern' horror flick as well, with also multiple modern horror ingredients thrown into the mix. It's a bit of a whodunit, a bit of a mystery, a bit of a gory movie. It's all a bit too much really and it feels like the movie was incapable of making any real choices.

The movie feels like a bit of a mess at times, which makes it all the more weird that the movie is actually being a bit of a too slow and boring movie as well for most part. It's weird, since the movie itself is doing a lot and there is plenty going on in its story. Perhaps it's all due to it that it never feels like the story is moving forward with anything. It's running around in circles mostly and it isn't ever doing anything truly interesting with its story, despite its original and interesting sounding premise.

I always really like Ronny Cox as an actor but I just have to say that the was quite terrible in this. Definitely not his finest moment, which perhaps is another indication of how poor the script for the movie actually was, since Cox is normally definitely capable of handing in a good performance, regardless of the quality of the movie and other people involved.

Some people regard this movie as a cult classic but I don't really see why. Sure, it has a great original and fun sounding concept but the execution of it is severely lacking. It's never a good tense, mysterious, creepy, fun or interesting movie to watch and it's just barely watchable in my opinion.

5/10

Watch trailer