Game of Thrones star Kit Harington has seen off challenges from several new releases to top the Hulu chart with his new horror thriller, The Beast Within. Originally released in theaters in July to a lacklustre reception, the chilling werewolf movie has landed on the platform just in time to capitalize on the march towards Halloween. Despite not exactly landing with critics, the film has seen off challenges from another new horror offering, Don’t Turn Off the Lights, and the mighty Bruce Springsteen and his Road Diary documentary to claw its way to the No.1 spot a day after its release. The Beast Within runs with the synopsis of:
“After a series of strange events, 10-year-old Willow (Caoilinn Springall) starts to question her family’s isolated life on a fortified compound deep in the English wilds after she follows her parents on one of their secret late-night treks to the heart of the ancient forest. But upon witnessing her father undergo a terrible transformation, she too becomes ensnared by the dark ancestral secret they’ve tried so desperately to conceal.”
Werewolf movies are a sub-genre of horror that always tends to find an audience – even if the movie lacks bite. Harington’s foray into the world of hairy transformations only made $51,860 at the box office back in July, and found itself lumped into the “rotten” pile according to critics.
Is The Beast Within Worth Watching on Hulu?
Rotten Tomatoes critics score The Beast Within just 36% on the site’s Tomatometer, coming to the consensus that the film has some decent performances but struggles thanks to a clunky plot, a boring story, and a lack of scares – something that really doesn’t help any horror movie. MovieWeb’s own Julian Roman reviewed the movie on its release and said of the film:
Kit Harington reviles as a monster inside and out in a poorly executed allegory of domestic abuse. The Beast Within’s double entendre has poetic intent but doesn’t fill the common sense void in a flawed narrative.
The inability of the movie to quite purvey its meaning until its final act is a large bone of contention with many reviewers. Collider’s Robert Taylor called out the movie’s overly vague attempts to examine its subject “until it’s suddenly made more explicit in ham-fisted ways.” Despite this, there are several reviewers who were more inclined to praise the movie’s building atmosphere and tension and forgive its other misgivings.
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Kit Harington has appeared in several projects since making a name for himself as Jon Snow in Game of Thrones, but he has failed to find that killer project to help him completely break away from the constant questions of when he will finally return to playing Jon Snow again in the on/off spin-off that was previously in development at HBO. One of his potentially big future roles could still come courtesy of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, following his relatively small role as Dane Whitman in Eternals. However, the future of the characters introduced in that movie is currently unknown, as the movie under-performed despite its stellar cast and the chances of a sequel have, for now, taken a dive.
10-year-old Willow follows her parents on one of their secret late-night treks to the heart of an ancient forest. After witnessing her father undergo a terrible transformation, she too becomes ensnared by the dark ancestral secret that they’ve so desperately tried to conceal.
- Director
- Alexander Farrell
- Cast
- Kit Harington , Ashleigh Cummings , James Cosmo , Caoilinn Springall
- Main Genre
- Horror
- Writers
- Alexander Farrell