Jislaaik bruh, they do make them like they used to. Well, sometimes, and the Netflix psychological thriller The Beast In Me starring Claire Danes is one of them. Actually, it’s not just made from a tried-and-tested fantastic thriller recipe, it takes the genre forward, it’s that good.
But skip the show if you expect everything to unfold in the first issue. Because the storytelling is somewhat non-linear. Creator Gabe Rotter shows us who the killer is right up front and then rewinds to Dane’s unwrapping of his deadly life path. The show is riveting and while it ramps up slowly, the tension is layered throughout until it reaches its climax.
Danes plays Aggie Wiggs, a writer between a stalled book project and the unresolved grief of losing her eight-year-old son to a drunk driver who escaped the law.
Aggie lives alone in the house meant for a family, carrying rage with nowhere to go. She’s divorced from her artist wife. It’s all quiet and placid, that is until real estate developer son-in-inheritance-line Nile Jarvis moves in.
Jarvis, played with menace by Matthew Rhys, has spent years under suspicion of murdering his first wife, who vanished without a trace. His arrival unsettles everyone, especially Aggie. Their first clash is over his request to cut a jogging path through communal woods.
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Then, a drunk FBI agent arrives at Aggie’s door late at night, warning her that Jarvis is someone she should befriend. This, despite the latter’s overtures toward Aggie and his offer of becoming the subject of her next book. And then, the young man who killed her child in the drunk-driving incident goes missing. Suspicion gears up a level.
Jarvis and Aggie end up playing a cat-and-mouse game veiled in friendship. The conversations between the two keep moving the plot forward and up the ante at each chinwag. The FBI agent’s also having an affair with a colleague who, in turn, is held to ransom by Jarvis.
Jarvis senior, Niles’ dad, is a powerful figure in the narrative. Actor Jonathan Banks takes him to a level of potential gangster, yet a man of virtue. He appears in the middle of it all when protests erupt around the family’s development projects. He is constantly trying to shape his son into someone a bit more legitimate and the tension and father-son missing links are tangible.
Tension is tangible
Every episode in this eight-part limited series is exceptional. The show was produced by Jodie Foster and stars Natalie Morales as Aggie’s estranged wife, Shelley, an artist, who is wooed by Jarvis junior’s new, young wife, Nina Jarvis, well-acted by Brittany Snow.
Nina Jarvis is a gallerist who sidebars Morales in a misguided relationship-building exercise with Aggie. It adds tension to the plot by creating undercurrents.
Meanwhile, Aggie keeps investigating Niles Jarvis and meets covertly with the FBI agent, who ends up being slaughtered. Jarvis’ kill list keeps increasing and the noose tightens around his alibi, charm and smooth-talking psychopathic behaviour.
The mood, the editing, every aspect of The Beast In Me is perfectly orchestrated to fuel a good binge. There really is no obvious flaw in any of the storytelling and, coupled with performances that show off the versatility of Danes and the manipulative ability of Rhys, every moment is snackable. The support cast is astonishingly good and each role could have taken and does, at times, take the lead in this super holiday thriller.
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