Idris Elba Stars in Beast: An Old-Fashioned World Premiere at MoMA

No one will ever fall asleep at a screening of Beast, a new movie directed by Baltasar Kormakur and starring Idris Elba who goes mano a eh, mano with a rogue lion. Very Hemingway. Man against beast. He’s protecting his daughters in the wilds of Africa, a place that is at once beautiful with animals running free, and fraught with the dangers of poachers interfering with the natural law of the jungle. The Lion King this is not. 

You really can’t blame the lions—mangy, miserable creatures-- for being beasts after being hunted and raped, so to speak, by evil, greedy humans—certainly the film’s hands down villains. You might call this movie an adventure thriller with many of the trappings of a gasp-worthy horror story: a giant paw piercing the glass of a disabled jeep, a family cowering inside. A soundtrack that punctuates the suspenseful momentum. The family’s backstory creates a rich buffer for the formulaic genre. No beasts were hurt in the making of this movie. The fiercest among them were CGI.

Introduced, at the Titus I MoMA, the two girls who play the daughters—Iyana Halley and Leah Jeffries-- were swept up to the stage, one in a dashiki print dress with an antebellum skirt, the other tripping over her train. Both sophisticated beyond their years, they took in the afterparty at Nobu with family and friends. As the DJ worked the crowd into a dance frenzy, producer Will Packer and writer Ryan Engle, talked about the making of the movie from an idea by Jaime Primak Sullivan who had been to the savannahs and knew the terrain. The actor Sharlto Copley looked very happy to be alive. Idris Elba, seated at his reserved table, fist bumped well-wishers, safe in New York City eating the best sashimi ever.