In psychoanalytical terms, this multi-cultural Gen Z slice-of-life mumblecore-meets-dark revenge thriller Beast Beast (produced by Alec Baldwin no less) might be certifiably schizoid. In what begins as a visually spasmodic high school coming-of-age drama, set in a woodsy Georgia suburb, storms out of the gate on what seems like a clear trajectory.
The film has an almost documentary-style first half, following the lives of a handful of high schoolers doing what American tweens have done for generations now—drink, smoke, get in fights at house parties broken up by the fuzz, hook up, shoplift, ride skateboards.
Although for those who went to high school in the pre-Internet age will get a full-on spectacle of how teenage lives now constantly negotiate two worlds—analog and digital, and the often-disturbingly blurred liminal space in between the two. But for this cross-section of suburban American youth in Beast Beast, the virtual worlds these kids at least partially inhabit—their carefully curated self-advertisements on YouTube, Instagram, and whatever other hip social media craze is happening—are increasingly crucial for their own self-validation.
There’s Nito, a Filipino skater dude (Jose Angeles) whose YouTube skateboarding and parkour antics net him enough online viewers to make him an internet celeb; while on the opposite end of the influencer spectrum, there’s Adam, whose post-high school life is marked by isolation in his affluent parents’ house and an arsenal-like room filled with expensive assault rifles (what could go wrong there?). He mooches off his mom and pop while making tone-deaf attempts to become a YouTube firearms show host. Meanwhile, Krista (the luminous Shirley Chen) is an aspiring actress whose DIY ethos means filming herself and her fellow actress acting out scenes on their phones, while the acting troupe she’s in seems to specialize in choreographed acts of violence.
These teens seem to be just living normal suburban lives until their lives intersect with the deeply disturbed Adam, who, enraged by trolling comments on his gun show channel, inadvertently gets his chance to “protect” himself (on camera, of course) with one of his many scary military-grade automatic assault rifles. The ugly murder-revenge-thriller course Beast Beast eventually takes is certainly sufficiently jolting: on the one hand, it’s a ridiculously over-the-top dark parody of Gen Z internet influencer culture but also an undeniably affecting, mature, and humanistic drama. Recommended.