Full Spoilers follow for all episodes of Netflix’s The Beast in Me. All eight episodes of the series debut November 13.
There’s a scene in the premiere episode of Netflix’s The Beast in Me in which raw sewage erupts through the pipes of the protagonist’s home plumbing. Gross? Yes. But apt. The show, a new mystery/thriller starring Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys, is all about keeping repulsive secrets hidden away and what, if any, consequences arise when those secrets see the light of day.
Danes, reteaming here with Homeland co-creator Howard Gordon (who serves as showrunner and executive producer along with fellow EPs Gabe Rotter, Jodie Foster and Conan O’Brien) stars as Agatha (Aggie) Wiggs, a once-successful writer who’s been stuck in a spiral of grief and unproductivity since the death of her young son. Aggie spends her days in a stately, run-down home on Long Island, pretending to be excited about completing her next book, an uninspired tome about the friendship between Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Aggie’s personal life is a mess, her work has stalled, and she’s generally struggling to make it through each day.
Enter: Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys), an uber-rich real estate developer who may or may not have killed his wife. Attempting to escape the media glare that followed his wife’s disappearance, Nile moves in next door to Aggie and the two strike up a slow-burning not-quite-friends but not-quite-enemies relationship. Aggie convinces Nile to be the subject of her next book, a story she’s truly excited about, and Nile eventually agrees. From there, the series accelerates into a hodgepodge game of cat-and-mouse with both jaw-dropping thrills and eye-rolling story choices that are frequently frustrating.
The Beast in Me is nothing if not compellingly watchable. Creepy rich guy who may or may not have killed his wife? Check. Grieving writer takes on said creep as the subject for her latest novel? Check. Broodingly gothic locales and plot twists galore? Well, you get the picture.
The acting here is superb. From the moment Danes shows up on screen, she brings the heat in every scene she’s in. Aggie’s grief is palpable throughout the season thanks to Danes’s ability to portray seemingly dozens of conflicting emotions all at once. Anyone who’s lost a loved one, been stuck in a dead-end job, or endured a failed relationship knows how grueling any one of those circumstances can be. As Aggie, Danes is constantly dealing with all three at once. From the emotions on her face to the nervous sense of dread she carries throughout the series, Danes imbues Aggie with a tragic sense of longing that colors nearly every scene of the show.
The rest of the cast is top-notch as well. Brittany Snow is a standout as the icy new wife of Rhys’s character, who may or may not know more than she lets on. Natalie Morales plays Aggie’s ex-wife Shelley, and an underused Jonathan Banks plays Nile’s father Martin.
Rhys, for his part, plays the perfect foil to Danes. For the first half of the series, you suspect that Nile Jarvis PROBABLY killed Madison, his first wife, but Rhys plays him just charming and slippery enough that you’re not 100% convinced. That is until the show reveals 3/4 of the way into the season that Nile is 100%, without a doubt, a stone-cold killer.
And that’s where The Beast in Me (kind of) lost me. Look, I know that not every series can be a perfectly constructed murder mystery where all the cards are revealed in the very last episode and you think to yourself “A-ha! They really got me there!” But I can’t help but feel that The Beast in Me loses most of its momentum the moment that Nile is revealed not to just be a murderer, but maybe kind of a serial killer.
After Aggie admits to Nile that she’s met several times with an FBI agent (played by David Lyons), Nile’s guard is up. So when the agent confronts him while trying to glean information about a possible corrupt deal between City Hall and Nile’s real estate company, Nile bludgeons the agent to death in a fit of rage. Later, we discover that the drunk driver responsible for the death of Aggie’s son was kidnapped and eventually murdered by Nile as well, who in turn (in one of the most surprising and effective moments of the entire series) attempts to frame Aggie. In the penultimate episode, a flashback outlining the events surrounding Madison’s disappearance, we see Nile – you guessed it – bludgeon his wife to death, thus resolving the central mystery of the entire show.
The Beast in Me pulls off a frustrating feat of getting the audience to care about the central mystery but fumbling its execution: A convenient macguffin in the form of an unearthed diary proves to Aggie that Nile is a killer; frequently clunky dialogue (“All he had left to kill was time”); a too-neat ending in which Nile gets his just desserts in the form of a knife to the gullet in the prison common area after Snow’s character rats him out; and so on. All seemingly innocuous peccadillos that congeal to prevent the show from being the elevated mystery it desperately wants to be.
Still, there’s much to love about The Beast in Me. Brilliant performances, some of the most heart-pounding psychological thriller scenes this side of Silence of the Lambs, and some truly beautiful cinematography (there’s a scene in Episode 7 lit entirely by Christmas lights that I’ll probably never forget) make the show a worthwhile binge.
If you are looking for a mystery that’s so twisty and creative as to leave your jaw on the floor for days after you finish, this show probably isn’t for you. But if you want to see Claire Danes, Matthew Rhys, and a talented ensemble act the hell out of some pretty gripping material, The Beast in Me is worth a watch.
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