A Most Savage Beast [Theo Hogben, Norway/UK, 2018]

A Most Savage Beast is the story of a young woman who, obsessed with her favourite romantic film, attempts to recreate the film in the real world by playing matchmaker to a pair of complete strangers, with disastrous results. It’s a good concept for a chiller film and A Most Savage Beast mostly does the concept justice. It’s a dialogue light film with most of the story and how the characters are feeling being conveyed through the visuals as well as the evocative musical score by composer Adne Lyngstad Nilsen.

As the visuals do the storytelling heavy lifting, it is fortunate that they are so strong with many memorable images that stick in the mind. This includes a slow zoom on the protagonist’s face as the light from the television dances across her face, a rack focus and un-focus revealing the protagonist lurking in the background of a shot and a slow pan away from a moment of violence. There’s also a Tarantino-esque feet first introduction to our main character. Indeed, the aforementioned pan away from an act of shocking violence is reminiscent of a certain infamous scene from Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, USA, 1992).

A Most Savage Beast is a story of how people often fill voids in their life with film or with media and the consequences this can have on someone and the people around them.

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‘A Most Savage Beast’ was a film in consideration for Short Focus Film Festival 2019.