Before a showing of Beast, you might be treated to a trailer for an upcoming re-release of Jaws, drawing a rather unfortunate comparison. While Spielberg’s film was an obvious point of inspiration for this one, which swaps its great white shark for an equally bloodthirsty lion, it does the rather insubstantial Beast no favors to remind its audience of its far superior forefather. Still, those seeking the simple pleasure of watching Idris Elba fight a lion won’t walk away disappointed.

Elba is Nate Samuels, a doctor whose obsession with work made him a distant father to his daughters, Meredith (Iyana Halley) and Norah (Leah Sava Jeffries). When his wife dies, he tries to reconnect with his girls and process their grief by visiting the South African village where she was born. Nate’s ranger friend Martin (Sharlto Copley) takes the family on a tour of the nearby wildlife preserve, unaware that the area is being stalked by a lion who has taken to killing humans for sport.

Beast succeeds where it counts, in tense sequences of the family evading the lion’s attacks. These scenes are effective in their brute simplicity. The film never overcomplicates itself with too-clever twists. There is an appreciable ruthlessness to Beast’s action, with the stakes never evolving beyond “if we leave this truck, the lion will eat us.” In a genre occasionally too-clever-by-half, Beast is exactly as straightforward as it needs to be.

What made Jaws’ shark scary wasn’t merely that it could kill people, but that for some unfathomable reason it wanted to kill people. Beast’s lion operates on a similar principle. The film opens with poachers trapping and killing most of its family, causing it to lash out and slaughter them. That the lion is on a roaring rampage of revenge is an amusing touch, creating a bizarre implication of ethical righteousness on the animal’s part. The film is never cloying in this respect, however. It is perfectly happy to characterize the lion as psychotic and amoral, killing for pleasure and reveling in its prey’s terror. Nature in Beast’s man-vs-wild struggle isn’t chillingly indifferent, it’s biased.

Beast’s major deficiency is in Kormákur’s direction, which comes across as far too classy. There are several floaty tracking shots throughout, making parts of it feel like a budget version of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant. These shots call attention to the director’s technical skill, giving the film an aura of respectability when it should be indulging in the griminess of its premise. The same thing is felt in the film’s first twenty minutes, which painstakingly establish the dysfunction of Nate’s family and the tragedy of their loss. A backstory about grief and/or trauma seems to be a prerequisite for horror and thriller films these days, and Beast would not have suffered for doing away with it.

Beast doesn’t reinvent the wheel when it comes to animal survival films, but it’s free enough of fat and frills to warrant a watch in the theatrical dog days of summer.

Little White Lies is committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them.

By becoming a member you can support our independent journalism and receive exclusive essays, prints, monthly film recommendations and more.