B-movies with a good budget are always a welcome sight to see, especially in today’s theatrical landscape. Creature features have always been a staple of the B-movie space; the simple premise of pitting some kind of dangerous animal against a talented actor has worked wonders before (2019’s excellent gator-centric flick Crawl comes to mind) and to be honest, getting something along those lines once a year should just become a regular practice at this point.

So yes, as silly as may be, there is a genius simplicity behind the concept of “Idris Elba fights a big African lion”. Build a solid enough story around why he has to fight this lion and beef it up with some competent filmmaking and you’ve got gold. To its credit, Beast mostly succeeds thanks to convincing effects and strong direction from Baltasar Kormákur. They carry the film through, making up for an often frustrating script that can’t quite thread its emotional beats together.

In Beast, Elba stars as Dr. Nate Samuels, a widowed father of two teenage daughters, the independent Meredith (Iyana Halley) and her younger sister Norah (Leah Jeffries). After a difficult year, Nate is looking to reconnect as a family and chooses to take everyone to the birthplace of his late wife: South Africa. Here they meet family friend Martin (Sharlto Copley), a manager of the Mopani Game Reserve who offers to take them on a safari tour through the reserve’s usually off-limits areas. What could go wrong?

The group of four end up in a bad way when their tour gets hijacked by one seriously pissed off lion, and the film goes from heartwarming family vacation to a lean and mean fight for survival. Kormákur is no stranger to survival stories, having previously directed The Deep, Everest and Adrift, and he brings some strong ideas to keep this one-note premise thrilling. Half of the film keeps the cast trapped in their car as the big cat skulks around waiting for someone foolish enough to try and get out. The singular and increasingly claustrophobic location makes for some easy tension, and every detail - a broken window, a just-out-of-range radio, earlier wounds, a dropped rifle - instantly becomes magnified and essential.

It’s acclaimed cinematographer Philippe Rousselot (A River Runs Through It, Interview with the Vampire, Big Fish) that proves to be the secret weapon of Beast. Every other shot is made to feel like one long continuous take, with the camera almost constantly in motion in ways that keep the dialogue and action fluid and dynamic. It’s an impressive trick and an inspired stylistic choice that helps keep the audience engaged without realizing it; somehow, the dozenth time the lion moves to attack its prey is just as entertaining as the first. The lion itself is yet another marvel of modern filmmaking and computer effects. It looks great and the movie does an excellent job at maintaining the illusion that the animal is really there. The cast does a good job of selling the effect as well.

Now, when we go to see a movie like this, we’re not really there for riveting drama or Shakespearean dialogue. We’re there to see Idris Elba engage in mortal combat with a vicious lion. But we do need some sort of emotional throughline to grasp, or at least an interesting character or two. Beast doesn’t manage to deliver on either one. Elba is able to do a tremendous amount of heavy lifting in the film’s first act, imbuing Nate with a nervous, overcompensating energy that helps establish the kind of man and father he is. Separated but not fully divorced from his wife in the final year of her life, Nate holds a considerable amount of guilt towards her and their daughters for not being around. Meredith all but completely resents him for it and the two have trouble talking their issues out.

But once the action begins and the film and its characters go into survival mode, both the emotional drama and any real characterization go right out the window. We never really get to know what kind of person Nate actually is beyond the opening scenes, and despite his lack of experience regarding wild animals, he remains remarkably calm, cool and collected through the entire ordeal. Nate is thankfully not a stoic and invincible action hero but he does far too often come across as someone who’s just as uninteresting as one. The subplot involving his relationship with his daughters and wanting to make up for his absence is “resolved” simply by him keeping them alive during the harrowing and traumatic situation. Granted, I guess an experience like that will do it, but it still feels all too easy (if you disregard the obvious physical toll, of course) and disappointingly avoids veering into more honest truths about child / parent complexities.

That said, the foundation that Beast builds for itself is solid enough for its ending, particularly the final shot, to hit the right notes. Paired with exceptional talent behind and in front of the camera and a premise that’s hard to say no to, the film makes for an ideal theatrical experience provided you’ve got some fun-seeking audience members with you. It may not be a great endorsement of the safari industry, but Beast has enough bite to make it worth a watch.

‘Beast’ is now playing in theaters.