Mail Online

Give this Beast of a thriller 2 hours of your time

FOR ANYONE who yearns for brevity in cinematic storytelling, it is not a good week. John Wick: Chapter 4 and Infinity Pool (both reviewed above) are a good deal longer than they need to be, and The Beasts (15, ★★★★I), a suspenseful thriller partly in Spanish and partly French, weighs in at a mighty two hours and 17 mins. Yet it is worth the investment of time.

It stars Denis Menochet, the French actor best known by English-speaking audiences for playing the farmer who at the start of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, with a Jewish family hiding in his basement, is chillingly toyed with by Christoph Waltz’s SS officer. Here he is once again a farmer subjected to intimidation tactics, but this time they’re far more crude.

Menochet plays Antoine, a well-heeled Frenchman who with his wife Olga (Marina Fois) has moved to northern Spain to fulfil the dream of running an organic farm.

But a pair of sly local brothers, Xan (Luis Zahera) and Lorenzo (Diego Anido), take against them, especially when the ‘Frenchies’ oppose plans for a lucrative wind farm.

At first, their antipathy just seems like unpleasant but essentially harmless provincial xenophobia. But with great skill director Rodrigo Sorogoyen, while also incorporating themes of family and gender, turns it into something far darker. (In cinemas and on Curzon Home Cinema.)

FILM

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2023-03-24T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-03-24T07:00:00.0000000Z

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