SEE ME // A FILM REVIEW OF "BEAST BEAST"
The online world of three teens and those who surround them is explored in BEAST BEAST, the new film by writer/director Danny Madden. It explores very different ideals in these teens living in Georgia and very different ways of looking at life. Nito (Jose Angeles) is a skateboard riding smiling kid who's home life is broken. His father barely acknowledges him and gives him a matress on the floor to sleep on, when he's not asking him to make himself scarce because he has company coming over. Krista (Shirley Chen) has a more innocent view on life and is the typical theatre nerd from high school. She's also the kind of person who is truly everyone's best friend. She's truly kind and has the best intentions. Adam (Will Madden, the real-life brother of the director) is a gun-toting teen who's created a YouTube channel to show people how to care for their guns and how to use them. He has a more cared for life, but his parents are frustrated that he doesn't want to get a "real job." He sees his channel as the only job he needs, but frustration keeps boiling over when he can't even get 50 views on his target practice videos.
It's clear from the outset that gun violence is brimming on the surface of this film, not only from watching Adam's frustrations become more and more unhinged, but because of our own real-life experience with tragedy after tragedy. Krista is annoyed that she can't seem to tap into real emotion in her acting class. Her teacher tries to guide her, but everything seems a bit phony. Nito is searching for a place to belong and he finds it when he meets a group of stoners and starts tagging along on their mini-adventures. Nito is quite an accomplished skater and his own YouTube videos have racked up quite a lot more than Adam's "Prime Shooter" gun practices. Nito is a kid with raw talent and sadly an absent father. He also finds comfort in Krista, and she in him, as two souls searching for something and finding it in each other. Adam continues to become more and more withdrawn and broken as he sinks further into his obsession of being noticed online.
BEAST BEAST is truly about three people and their need to be accepted, to be liked, to feel authentic. They each go about it in very different ways, with Adam's being the most destructive. Watching him become unnerved when commenters on his videos begin making fun of him is truly terrifying. All three lead actors turn in terrific performances under Madden's guiding eye. Jose Angeles is warm and full of charm, while Will Madden's performance is raw and unhinged, full of misplaced anger and fear. Shinning brightest of all is Shirley Chen, who turns in an extraodinary performance that we get to see mold and change in real time as the life around her radically alters. The world set up here is very real and all too familiar, one that sadly still has Americans divided on. The huge tonal shift happens when tragedy strikes the film, and smartly Madden doesn't end it there, or try to chalk it up to a life lesson. He goes a bit deeper and darker, all the while unsettling us with what an aftermath might look like and how painful that the journey there and back truly is.
GRADE: B+
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY Danny Madden STARRING Shirley Chen, Jose Angeles, Will Madden, Courtney Dietz, Daniel Rashid, Anissa Matlock, Stephen Ruffin, Chip Carriere IN SELECT THEATRES APRIL 16TH AND ON DEMAND MAY 4TH. FOR MORE INFO: BEAST BEAST