Timo Rose’s Beast (2009)

Written and Directed by Timo Rose, based on a concept by Mark Hyacinth
Starring Joseph Zaso, Raine Brown, Joe Davison, Timo Rose, Yasmin Pucci, Andreas Pape, and Eileen Daily
Review by Dan Coyle

Are werewolves the new zombies? Well, with the recent success of Zombieland, zombies are still the new zombies. But every few years, we seem to be subjected to a spate of werewolf projects. We’ve got the troubled remake of the Wolf Man coming up with Benicio del Toro, for one thing. Vampire fiction seems practically overrun with werewolves as side characters or enemies. The cult reputation of the Ginger Snaps trilogy continues to grow. And the low budget horror scene has a bit of full moon fever, with Beast- ahem, Timo Rose’s Beast...

Writer/co-star/editor/director Rose (the Mutation series, Barricade, the upcoming Game Over) has a concept I haven’t seen before- clandestine blue collar werewolf hunters traveling the world and sharing research through the internet. After a particularly gory attack in the opening scene by a powerful werewolf that takes out a lot of hunters (and eats up a lot of the effects budget), the network of hunters is established through a series of amusing video snippets. Not only does this showcase the cameos Rose has lined up (Monique Dupree, among others), but it got my hopes up that I was in for a different take on werewolves.

The action shifts to Germany, where drifter Alex (Joseph Zaso) has decided to return to the home of his half-sister, phone sex operator Amy (Raine Brown). Alex is reeling from the death of his girlfriend in the opener, and lately has been behaving strangely. He also has to put up with his very own wicked stepmother Lydia (an over the top Eileen Daily). Meanwhile, werewolf hunters Boomer (Joe Davison) and Mike (Rose) are tracking the “alpha” wolf that killed their bretheren but experience some car trouble. Even more meanwhile, a psychotic couple is shooting their way across the German countryside. Will the hunters and the couple somehow end up at Alex and Amy’s house? You bet your ass they all will. Does Alex have a... beast growing inside him after the werewolf attack? It would seem so. Is this movie any good? Reply hazy, try again later.

Beast has some decent concepts rattling around in its head, but overall it’s a painful, incoherent mess. The first problem comes from the inconsistency of the performances. I’ll start with the good. I’ve never seen Raine Brown before, but she’s funny and sweet, making Amy a kickass punk scream queen. There’s a scene where she has to take a lot of abuse from a werewolf, and Brown and Rose flip the script on the typical damsel distress. By contrast, Joseph Zaso as Alex is all scowl and nothing else. Alex is meant to be emotionally withdrawn and behaving oddly, but Zaso’s grim faced portrayal doesn’t suggest a man struggling with dark secrets so much as it does a bad Batman parody. Zaso’s frown is permanently affixed every scene. Even when he’s relating to Amy, it’s hard to see him as a sympathetic anti-hero than it is a ticking clock labeled “Will wolf out soon.” It’s a lousy performance that pales next to Brown’s engaging turn. Eileen Daily as Lydia is... well, Eileen Daily. She’s wacky as all get out, and fun to watch, but often she seems to be in another movie entirely. Thomas Kercmar and Yasmin Pucci, as the killer couple, also seem ported in from another film, as they don’t add too much to the proceedings, though they have their moments.

Where Beast is strongest is when it’s focuses on Mike and Boomer. For the first half of the film, Mike and Boomer are just walking and shooting the shit. Davison (writer/producer co-star with Brown of 100 Tears) is cranky and sarcastic and cracking jokes, while Mike is soft-spoken. While Davison and Rose aren’t terrific actors, Davison’s easygoing nature and Rose’s deadpan combine to form a nice back and forth that becomes the film’s most surprising pleasure. Rose’s shots of the German countryside as they make their way to their destination are dark and foreboding without being obvious- it’s amazing what

It’s when the two of them actually get where they’re going that everything goes to hell. And not in a good way. Rose has been making films for the better part of a decade, but most of the time Beast is incoherent. Editing and continuity are shot to hell. There are scenes that go on twice as long as they need to- for example, the opening werewolf attack cuts over and over again to the werewolf attacking, then the hunters taking aim. Then the werewolf attacking, and the hunters taking aim. A climactic fight between a transforming werewolf and another character has scene after scene of the wolf struggling with his shape-shift, until you slowly realize that Rose did not have the budget to make the guy up to look like a werewolf. Rose sets the world record for longest werewolf transformation sequence. There are decent effects in the film, but it’s clear that Rose didn’t have the budget or possibly the time to do everything he wanted to do. In a later scene, someone gets chopped up with a chainsaw, and Rose intercuts shots of a bloody body with still pictures of a chainsaw. Points for getting around what I assume was some sort of issue, but, uh, why couldn’t they just borrow a chainsaw and film the character holding it?

The story tries to be shocking and nasty like a Tarantino film, yet tries to be funny as well, with diminishing returns. And considering how all powerful the wolf Mike and Boomer are tracking is, the actual confrontation with said wolf is a complete wet firecracker (and predictable to boot). The plot drags quite a bit before getting to the point an astute viewer can probably deduce in the first act.

As someone who’s worked on his fair share of micro-budget features as an actor, I empathize with the struggles Rose must have gone through to get financing and trying to work with what he’s been given to get his vision just right. And I think amid the dross, he’s got some potential. But his skills as a filmmaker are lacking, on some pretty basic levels (again, his editing is almost terminally sloppy). Maybe next time, he should just have Mike and Boomer run around talking and hunt wolves off screen. That would be the kind of fun. And bring Amy along for the ride.