In Beast, one character briefly wears a Jurassic Park T-shirt. Positive sufficient, this movie a few household on a safari-gone-wrong begins with ooohs and aaahs, and positive sufficient, later there’s operating and screaming. It’s a neat wink-and-a-nod to the viewers of the type of film to count on — but when something, the Spielberg movie it most carefully resembles is Jaws: exchange the shark with a vengeful lion, ditch Quint, and also you’re not far off.

Placing within the type of gruffly amiable efficiency that has turn out to be his speciality, Idris Elba performs the good-hearted however emotionally troubled Chief Brody-type, a widower who worries for his two emotionally distant teenage kids. A visit to the South African homeland of his late estranged spouse, he hopes, will bridge the hole between them. Sharlto Copley is the Hooper-esque recreation warden who takes them on a non-public tour of the reserve.

Naturally, issues don’t go based on plan, and when poachers assault one satisfaction of lions, a male seeks bloody revenge. As fastidiously over-explained in expository dialogue, feminine lions are the hunters; male lions are solely there to guard the satisfaction. It’s a pleasant, lean style set-up: a “rogue lion”, as Copley’s character places it, out for vengeance, and in a unfastened parallel, Elba’s father character trying to defend his personal clan.

However — very similar to in Jaws — catastrophe specialist Baltasar Kormákur (Everest, Adrift) is comparatively sparing along with his apex predator. Impressively rendered by way of CGI — suppose the Lion King remake, with much less dead-eyed singing — the lion assaults occur off-screen as a lot as they do on-screen, a phantom menace stalking the bushlands. For every of their set-pieces, Kormákur and cinematographer Philippe Rousselot make efficient use of a sequence of ‘oners’, formidable unbroken takes with the digital camera proper up in everybody’s grill, which lends the motion a pleasant stress and theatricality.

The plot sails alongside just about precisely as you would possibly count on, with few surprises and a closing showdown that’s often fairly foolish — sure, as promised within the trailer, Idris Elba actually does straight-up punch a lion within the face — however so far as trashy blockbuster leisure goes, that is uncomplicatedly enjoyable and, at 93 minutes, doesn’t cling round longer than wanted. As Quint may need put it: “This lion… swallow you complete.”