Beast: A Monster Among Men (2013): A Macabre Review.

Starring

Earlier in the month I posted some news about Beast: A Monster Among Men regarding it's released On Demand.  So it was inevitable that I follow up with an actual review and see how it measures up.  There's certainly not much to measure budget-wise, as it only has an estimated budget of $20,000.  Hearing such low numbers often pique my interest, mainly to see how resourceful those behind the making of the movies can be.  Let's talk about the story, shall we?

Five friends drive into the great outdoors for camping and good times.  However, for some unknown reason there is a lot of tension between Mike (Blake Farris) and Ely (Tj Lavin).  This is especially bumming out Bill, who just wants them to get along and have a good time.  After a less than enjoyable drive they arrive at their cabin and begin the festivities.

Unfortunately it's not too far into the night when Ely and Mike get into it again.  Bill tries once again to calm things down, but to no avail.  Ely takes off into the woods, with Bill giving chase.  The remaining three stay and continue with their fun, but shortly after they hear a woman's scream coming from somewhere in the woods.  After some debate, they decide to go investigate, only to find Bill's bloody corpse a little ways into the woods.

His attempts at literally becoming one with nature didn't go quite as planned.

Noticing that Ely is still missing, Mike suspects that Ely, who was already weird to begin with, is responsible for Bill's death and wants to find him.  Eventually Mike, Shawn and Chris run into another group of campers and learn that two of that group's friends are also missing.  They reluctantly band together to find their missing friends, but even the "strength in numbers" rule doesn't help, as one by one more people die.  Did Ely really lose his mind and decide to off everybody?  Or is there another reason for the steadily growing body count?

Even deep in the woods, vicious Bieber/One Direction debates can be seen.

As you might expect, my expectations for this movie (given the budget) wasn't terribly high.  But there was a few good points.  For one, even though apparently the actors weren't actually professional actors, but were people who had regular jobs, the acting for the most part wasn't that bad.  I've certainly seen worse.  Also, the scenery was very pretty.  Anytime a movie takes advantage of its surroundings is good to me.

There are a couple of issue I had though.  For one, pretty much every death that takes place happens off-screen.  Now, it's probably due to the budget, or probably to hide who is responsible for the killings.  But when I'm watching a horror flick and people die, i want to see at least some of the murders take place.  Also, and this is kind of nitpicking on my part, there were certain scenes taking place in the woods at night which was just a little too brightly lit, which I found a little distracting.

If you have some time to kill, go ahead and check it out. It's a shorter movie, running approx. 73 minutes, and it doesn't really drag along so you won't feel tortured by watching it.  As I previously posted, it's available On Demand, and it had a DVD release date of October 1, so keep an eye out.  Rest in peace.

Macabre Rating: 2 out of 5 tombstones