Full spoilers follow for all episodes of the Netflix series The Beast in Me. All eight episodes of the series will debut on November 13.
In the premiere episode of the Netflix series The Monster in Me, there is a scene in which raw sewage bursts through the pipes of the main character's home plumbing system. Gross? Yes. But it was successful. The show, a new mystery thriller starring Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys, is about hiding ugly secrets and what consequences, if any, will arise when those secrets come to light.
Danes, reunited here with Homeland co-creator Howard Gordon (who serves as showrunner and executive producer along with EP co-stars Gabe Rotter, Jodie Foster and Conan O'Brien), plays Agatha (Aggie) Wiggs, a once-successful writer who is stuck in a spiral of grief and unproductivity after the death of her young son. Aggie spends her days in a stately, ramshackle house on Long Island, pretending to look forward to finishing her next book, a dull tome about the friendship between Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Aggie's personal life is in disarray, her work has stalled, and she generally has to struggle to get by each day.
Enter: Niall Jarvis (Matthew Rhys), a super-rich property developer who may or may not have killed his wife. Trying to escape the media scrutiny that follows his wife's disappearance, Niall moves next door to Aggie and the two begin a slow-growing relationship, not quite friends but not quite enemies. Aggie convinces Neil to be the subject of her next book, a story that really excites her, and Niall eventually agrees. From this point on, the series becomes a cat-and-mouse mess with amazing thrills and stunning plot choices that often disappoint.
“The Beast in Me” is simply breathtaking. A creepy rich guy who may or may not have killed his wife? Check. A grieving writer taking this nastiness as the theme of her latest novel? Check. Brooding gothic and plot twists galore? Well, you get the idea.
The acting here is superb. From the moment Danes appears on screen, she brings heat to every scene she's in. The Aggies' grief is palpable throughout the season thanks to Danes' ability to portray seemingly dozens of conflicting emotions at once. Anyone who has lost a loved one, been stuck in a dead-end job, or experienced a failed relationship knows how debilitating any of these circumstances can be. As Aggie, Danes constantly deals with all three at once. From the emotion 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 almost every scene of the series.
The rest of the cast is also excellent. Brittany Snow stands out as Rhys's character's icy new wife, who may or may not know more than she lets on. Natalie Morales plays Aggie's ex-wife Shelley, and the underused Jonathan Banks plays Neil Martin's father.
Rice, for its part, is ideal for the Danes. In the first half of the series, you suspect that Niall Jarvis PROBABLY killed Madison, his first wife, but Rhys plays him so charming and slippery that you're not 100% sure. That is until season 3/4 when the show reveals that Neil is, without a doubt, 100% a cold-blooded killer.
And then “The Beast in Me” (sort of) lost me. Look, I know not every show can be a perfectly constructed murder mystery where all the cards are revealed in the very last episode and you think to yourself, “Aha! They really got me!” But I can't help but feel like “The Beast in Me” loses much of its momentum the moment it's revealed that Neil is not just a killer, but perhaps something of a serial killer.
After Aggie admits to Neil that she dated an FBI agent (played by David Lyons) several times, Niall's feelings escalate. So when the agent confronts him while trying to gather information about a possible corrupt deal between City Hall and Neil's real estate company, Niall beats the agent to death in a fit of rage. We later discover that the drunk driver responsible for the death of Aggie's son has been kidnapped and ultimately killed by Niall, who in turn (in one of the most surprising and effective moments of the entire series) tries to frame Aggie. In the penultimate episode, a flashback depicting the events surrounding Madison's disappearance, we see Neil – you guessed it – beat his wife to death, thereby revealing the central mystery of the entire show.
“The Beast in Me” accomplishes the frustrating feat of leaving viewers wondering about the central mystery, but falls short in executing it: a convenient MacGuffin in the form of an unearthed diary proves to Aggie that Neil is the killer; often clunky dialogue (“All he had to kill was time”); an overly neat ending in which Neal gets his well-deserved desserts in the form of a knife to the esophagus in the prison's common area after Snow's character rats him out; and so on. All the seemingly harmless sins that add up to keep the series from becoming the sublime mystery it so desperately wants to be.
Still, there's a lot to love about The Beast in Me. Brilliant acting, some of the most heartbreaking psychological thriller scenes this side of The Silence of the Lambs, and truly beautiful cinematography (there's a scene completely lit up in Christmas lights in episode seven that I'll probably never forget) make the show worthwhile entertainment.
If you're looking for a mystery so intricate and creative that it will leave your jaw on the floor for days after completing it, then this show probably isn't for you. But if you want to see Claire Danes, Matthew Rhys and a talented ensemble play the hell out of some pretty exciting material, The Beast in Me is worth a watch.
