Delivery The Beast Within Movie Review

Delivery The Beast Within Review

Director: Brian Netto

Starring: Laurel Vail, Danny Barclay, Rob Cobuzio, Rebecca Brooks, David Allan Graf, Lance Buckner, Peter McLynn

‘In 2009 Kyle and Rachel Massey agreed to document their first pregnancy for a reality television series,’ reads DELIVERY’s first intertitle. ‘The show would never make it to air.’

This is Paranormal Uterus Activity. Styled as a behind the scenes documentary concerning the shelved television series in question (also called ‘Delivery’), the horror of THE BEAST WITHIN is derived from its faux documentary formula.

This strict adherence to the tried and tested guidelines of the genre results in a convincing mock documentary. The first twenty minutes of the film depicting the non-broadcast pilot of ‘Delivery’ almost in its entirety, is a triumph, uncannily resembling the material on which it is based.

Viewed on its own, the pilot sequence would excite any US constructed reality fan. The onscreen graphics are suitably kooky, the goofy chitter-chatter knowingly inane and the embedded music omnipresent. Kyle (Danny Barclay) and Rachel (Laurel Vail) are judged just right. They are cute without being unbearably saccharine or schmaltzy.

This section, though, isn’t without its problems. Whilst it is a fine method of introducing and developing characters, it is notably deficient in scares. That in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing for a first act, the trouble is that the show-within-a-film lacks the anticipation of a scare because we, the audience, know that this is meant to be a fit for transmission, 8pm documentary about expectant parents. It’s like standing in the base in a game of tig. You can’t be got at and you know it.

Comprising of unused footage from the abandoned project and littered with talking heads, the remaining hour and ten is the pay-off for persevering with this initial barren land of horror.

Unlike the ever fashionable torture porn that elicits a visceral pleasure from the dismembering of beautiful people, DELIVERY is very much part of the old school. An old school that teaches that a fear of seeing protagonists fail can be a just as potent method of delivering horror than the butchering of barely sentient department store mannequins.

Other than the central premise of a haunted pregnancy, the drive of THE BEAST WITHIN is about real people with real problems, engaged in real domestic pacts that force their hands. The couple stay in their seemingly possessed home because they can’t afford anywhere different, and an abortion is never considered because these are two people motivated by love and optimism.

We know this because we see the characters interact, this is again thanks to the reality television element of the piece. Not a flippant, throwaway gimmick as I had anticipated, but rather the film’s crutch. To have made DELIVERY about any other couple would have sacrificed the authenticity of the sequence of events. Without Kyle and Rachel being followed about with cameras, the narrative would have felt more accidental, coincidental and scattergun.

It’s not all serious however. The film also succeeds in gently prodding and playing with overused horror tropes, affecting a kitschy TEETH-like tone. The revulsion of animals, nightmares, spooky paintings, religion, technical interference, the list of targets is almost endless, yet it does not detract from the film’s main job of causing us to jump from our chairs.

Come at DELIVERY: THE BEAST WITHIN from whichever angle you like and find yourself presently surprised. It is an exciting directorial debut from an undoubted new talent.

DELIVERY: THE BEAST WITHIN is release on VOD on 27th May and in limited US cinemas from 30th May. UK fans can catch it on DVD from the 12th May.