Just because Halloween is over doesn’t mean you have to stop watching spooky movies. For example, The Beast Within is now streaming on Hulu after opening in theaters earlier this year, and it’s certain to send a chill down your spine.
Directed by Alexander J. Farrell, with a screenplay by Greer Ellison, The Beast Within is ostensibly a werewolf movie, starring Game of Thrones actor Kit Harington as a man who sometimes transforms into a wolf-like monster. (Jon Snow does love his wolves!) But, as his young on-screen daughter discovers, the story is a little more complicated than that.
Also starring Ashleigh Cummings, James Cosmo, and Caoilinn Springall, The Beast Within offers a new take on the werewolf stories we all know and love. If you found yourself confused by the ambiguous ending, don’t worry, Decider is here to help. Read on for a breakdown of The Beast Within plot summary, and The Beast Within ending explained.
Warning: Major The Beast Within spoilers ahead.
The Beast Within plot summary:
A young English girl named Willow (Caoilinn Springall) lives with her parents Noah (Kit Harington) and Imogen (Ashleigh Cummings), and her grandfather Waylon (James Cosmo) in a remote location. She has a severe form of asthma that requires her to breathe from an oxygen tank, at times. Willow knows there is something strange going with her parents—every month her mom takes her dad into the woods, along with a pig from their farm. She also sees bruises on her mother’s body, and her father has a nasty temper triggered when she and her mother do anything without him.
One night, Willow follows her parents into the woods. She sees her mother put a chain collar around her father, and watches as he transforms into a terrifying monster. Willow panics, has an asthma attack, and is taken home by her mother. When Willow recovers, she is initially angry at both of her parents. Her grandfather tries to take Willow away. Willow is ready to leave with Grandpa, but Noah and Imogen stop them.
Dad takes Willow aside and tearfully explains that he is inflicted by a family curse, that forces him to transform into a monster once a month, when the full moon rises. In other words, he’s a werewolf. He cries and explains that he knows he should leave, but that he doesn’t want a life without his wife and daughter. Willow accepts this story, and hugs her father.
For the next month, things are good. Then the next full moon comes, and mom and dad disappear into the woods again. Willow plays with dolls at home, imagining the scene of her mom chaining up her father. She overhears her mother and grandfather arguing—grandpa tells his daughter that someday Noah will kill both her and Willow. A panicked Willow has an asthma attack, and her oxygen tank is out of air. Mom is forced to go into the barn during dad’s transformation to get a spare tank.
Dad attacks Grandpa, injuring him. Mom goes back to save Grandpa, and with Willow’s help, the three of them nearly escape the house. But Dad is chasing them, so Grandpa stays behind to buy Willow and Mom more time to escape. Mother and daughter flee into the woods, with Dad on their trail.
The Beast Within ending explained:
Dad/the werewolf picks up Willow, as if to run off with her. Mom convinces Dad to put Willow down, and speaks in a soothing voice, asking him to return to his human form. But it doesn’t work. When it becomes clear that Dad/the werewolf is about to kill Mom, Willow uses her oxygen tank as a blow torch to burn her father alive. After Willow kills her father, she and her mom pack up their life, move out of the house, and presumably start over.
In the final scene of the movie, the movie reveals via flashbacks that the entire “werewolf” thing is, in fact, a metaphor for domestic abuse. We see that Willow has constructed this narrative as a coping mechanism, after she witnessed her father—fully human, and not a werewolf—brutally beating up her mother. What she saw in the barn that night was not supernatural, but it was certainly horrific.
With this new information, we can see previous scenes in the movie in a different light—like the scene where Willow was using dolls to imagine her father being restrained. We have been seeing these events from her point of view, and she’s an unreliable narrator. It was a delusion that was encouraged by her father, who would rather his daughter think he is a werewolf than a wife beater.
And on that cheery note, the movie ends. The whole thing was a metaphor!
