Hottoceame The Age of Commercialism

Dotbankey A lot of fun.

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Leofwine_draca THE BEAST was one of the big TV miniseries of 1996 and widely heralded as a follow up to JAWS. It's based on another Peter Benchley novel and is very similar in story and structure to the Spielberg classic, with the twist that now it's a giant squid terrorising a small coastal town. The TV movie feel means that this isn't particularly dangerous or frightening, but I found that there was enough interesting material to sustain the three-hour running time and it's pretty entertaining to boot.The film boasts a good mix of characters, half of whom will get inked or swallowed by the climax, and some nice character actors in the mix. William Petersen is the hero who nobody listens to and Charles Martin Smith the antagonist in a suit. Best of the bunch is DARKMAN's Larry Drake as the drunken fisherman who steals all his scenes. The '90s-era CGI effects have dated badly, but the life-size squid effects are pretty decent and overall this is solid enough, if no classic.

Cyberknight Masao Kawata It's impossible not to compare this (or most water monster films) with "Jaws" (1975). Considering "The Beast" was produced about twenty years after the former, we start seeing the problems.First obvious problems are the special and the visual effects. "Jaws" went with animatronics, which caused so much trouble on pre- and production stages that the whole script had to be remade, turning "just another monster film" into an all-time classic thriller. In "The Beast", they tried to show the monster as much as they could, using both rubber animatronics and visual effects. Usually, it works fine enough, but there are times when things go bad, like at the very ending of the first episode (it's a two parts series), when the "beast" jumps out of water, for no reason, to hit a buoy. The stop-motion used for that scene looked really dated, like ED-209 on original "RoboCop" (1987).The second problem is the pace and the film run time. They could have cut a lot of drama out without hurting the story, reducing its run length of almost 3h and increasing its pace. There's even some romance, one so unnecessary that, after the beast is destroyed (yes, it's an American film, so it ends in a big explosion, but who couldn't have foreseen that), the film simply ends, without showing the surviving couple together or whatever.Although the plot is interesting and the effects are fine, the film drags a lot, making it a one shot experience. There are no thrills or anything that makes it worth watching again. This is another of those films not too bad that have to be avoided, but not good enough to be watched more than once.

Dave Anderson When i 1st saw this movie , i was amazed with the story line , and the entire plot of the movie a 60 feet giant squid (not to mention that this movie cant be considered sci-fi , as giant squid exist and they can grow to 100 feet and they will eat anything , as well as have the power to sink a small ship ) . They only made 1 mistake in the movie , when the doctors tell his assistant , that the hook is from the Archeuthis Dux , while in real life the giant squid aka Archeuthis Dux , has only ring with small teeth surrounding it , and the colossal squid has hooks . The full miniseries covers a lot of the plot without it the movie isn't as interesting . The way i see it , this movie own jaws ! Peter B. did a great job , the squid looks exactly as it looks in real life . 10/10

Iyanola The reason it went down quite well in Oz is because most of the footage is of the most beautiful island in the Caribbean - St. Lucia. They spent about 3 months filming down here - mostly in the fishing port of Soufriere in the shadow of the much shown Pitons, St. Lucia's national landmark and also a World Heritage Site. About the movie itself, WHERE EXACTLY HAVE THE ACTORS GOT THE TERRIBLE CARIBBEAN ACCENTS FROM???? - Why do Directors think we all sound like Jamaicans - What is that all about? - Clearly there was no local coach involved as had there been, they would have stopped the swearing in the local Creole language 'Patois' which seems to have slipped through the sensors net - Anyone who knows the lingo - check out the scene where the local boy is challenging the young hero to jump the cliff - at the end of his line, you'll hear him drop an almighty curse on a part of his mothers anatomy that best remain unstated - very common down these parts - just thought I'd mention it!! Shockingly bad movie by the way