Upamanyu Biswas
Directed by Alexander J. Farrell, ‘The Beast Within’ ends on an ambiguous note that suggests not everything is as straightforward as it seems in this suspense-driven horror in the woods. Little girl Willow is faced with the terrifying prospect of confronting her father’s monstrous nature face-to-face in the final sequence, which pushes their family to the brink. Meanwhile, something darker seems to be lurking within Willow’s veins, the type of stuff that constantly plagues her with nightmares and makes her anxious about the generational curse moving through the family. Amidst the chaos and dysfunctional family dynamics, Willow has to figure out where she fits into the whole puzzle and whether the monster in the woods is real or just a figment of her imagination. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Beast Within Plot Synopsis
In the middle of the woods, a reclusive man named Noah lives his life in a cabin alongside his wife, Imogen, and their daughter, Willow. Although they seem like a typical family in the rural countryside, the family has one strange secret. Every few days, Willow notices her father being whisked away by her mother to the adjacent woods, from which she returns alone in the morning. Later, Noah is brought back, often covered in blood and looking disoriented. Curious about the mystery, Willow decides to follow their trail on one such excursion, hoping to learn what happens to her father in the woods. She successfully stalks them to a ruined house deep in the forest, where she witnesses her father being shackled next to a live domestic pig by her mother. That night, Willow learns that her father is a werewolf.
Every few nights, whenever there is a full moon, Noah has to be taken to the woods and locked in the ancestral home as it is the only way for him to turn into a werewolf and not harm his family. Watching the monstrous transformation traumatizes Willow, who asks to be taken away from her parents. Her grandfather, Waylon, who lives close to the family, helps her in that regard but runs into conflict with Noah and Imogen. She is brought back to the house, and Noah reveals his secret and the story behind his lycanthropy to her. He tells her about his grandfather, who had the same curse upon him, and how he killed his wife when she followed him into the woods during his full moon phase. Noah insists that he is not a bad person, but a monster lurks inside him because of the generational curse.
Over the coming days, Willow manages to reconnect with her father and starts bonding with him now that the secret is out. However, one day, Noah smells another man’s scent on one of Imogen’s dresses that she wore during an outing to the town. It worries him that she might be thinking of leaving him, and he aggressively approaches her. Previously, Willow had noticed how her mother carried several horrifying bruises under her clothes, which suggests that Noah’s violence as a werewolf might have also seeped into his human side. With renewed suspicion that his family might want to leave him behind, insecurity takes over Noah as his transformation into a werewolf in the woods leads him back to the family house, where Imogen, Willow, and Waylon must survive the night.
Does Willow Kill Noah?
At the end of ‘The Beast Within,’ Noah turns into a werewolf and starts hunting his family. Thankfully, Willow and her mother are helped by Waylon, who shows up with a shotgun, expecting the worst. The three try to remain calm as a storm breaks out. However, when a loud banging breaks out against the compound’s wooden gates, they suspect that it is not just the wind blowing against the entrance but Noah in his transformed state. Things get worse when Imogen forgets the shotgun outside the house in her desperation to save Willow, who has run out of her oxygen cylinder. Subsequently, Waylon tells them to hide while he takes on the monster. It proves to be a short distraction before Noah tracks Willow and Imogen down in the forest, where the young girl is forced to kill her father to save her mother.
The whole final sequence proves to be a harrowing moment where everything goes to hell, and Willow is faced with a decision that has been on her mind since the beginning of the story. Throughout the narrative, there is an underlying tension between Willow and Noah as the young girl finds herself disconnected from her father, who seems oddly scary and bereft of his old, lovable self. The relationship becomes even more complicated when Willow learns about the generational werewolf curse affecting Noah, which turns him into a monster on a regular basis. However, she is more afraid of him because he often shows his monstrous nature even when he is human. There are short bursts of mood swings through which Noah usually seems more like an abuser than an ordinary man with a disease.
The constant threat of Noah in her life reaches a breaking point in the final moments of ‘The Beast Within.’ Earlier, her grandfather told her that she must do whatever she needs to ensure her family’s safety. Thus, when she finds her mother being held by Noah in his werewolf state, she is faced with a dilemma in that she has to rid herself of her father despite having shared some beautiful moments with him in the past. It is a cruel and tragic reality for Willow, who is confronted by a serious adult matter at a tender age. However, having seen her mother suffer throughout the film, the decision to kill arrives upon her instinctually when she lights the werewolf on fire with her oxygen cylinder. Still, even though Noah might be dead in corporeal form, the trauma left behind in Willow is likely to remain permanently.
Is Noah a Real Werewolf Or Just Abusive to His Family?
One of the more interesting aspects of ‘The Beast Within’ is how it embraces a level of ambiguity with a lot of its fantastical aspects, including Noah’s supposed lycanthropy. For the majority of the story, it seems straightforward that the Avery family’s deepest secret revolves around Noah’s transformation during a full moon. As the movie progresses, however, an alternate theory presents itself. It is possible that instead of turning into a werewolf, Noah is simply an abusive husband who beats up his wife on a regular basis, which is why terrifying bruises cover Imogen’s body. Willow must have witnessed the domestic violence at some point in her life, and because she is a child, she might have imagined a mythical werewolf angle to cope with what was happening in her home.
It brings a sense of tragedy and grounded sobriety into the story rather than the elevated horror running through the movie. In fact, during the penultimate scene, Willow sees a flashback of her father just as she is about to kill him and how he looks like his normal human self as he was inflicting violence upon Imogen. It adds more fuel to the argument that Willow was creating an imagined scenario involving monsters because that is how terrifying the domestic abuse seemed to her as a child. Still, the movie never explicitly provides any scenes where Noah is outwardly aggressive towards Imogen in a physical manner, other than grabbing her harshly from time to time. The violence could have been subliminal and existed outside the movie’s narrative, witnessed from a distance by Willow.
However, the most reasonable explanation seems to be a blend of both theories. It is possible that Noah was ultimately just an abusive man torturing his wife and turning his daughter’s life into hell. Yet, it also seems quite likely that those feelings of anger he started showing towards his family were exacerbated due to his lycanthropy. As all three of the family members seem to have some knowledge of the werewolf aspect of Noah’s life, it seems implausible that it was all in Willow’s head. Therefore, a combination of factors played a part throughout the film in influencing both the mythical side of Noah’s life and his behavior at home. Maybe the movie intends to send a message that Noah is a monster mainly because of his abusive nature as a human and not because he is a werewolf.
Does Willow Have the Generational Curse?
Although Willow seems to end the monster plaguing her family’s sanity by killing Noah, things are still left hanging in the balance. To that end, one of the overriding aspects is the nature of the generational werewolf curse in the Avery family and whether it has finally ended with Noah’s death. Earlier in the narrative, the young protagonist has a terrifying vision where she sees the same type of transformation happening to her just as she sees it in her father. It creates this fear in Willow that, as the offspring of Noah, she might have picked up the same lycanthropy gene and is likely to exhibit it in the future. In the closing flashback scene, Willow is even struck by how her father calls her “my little monster,” alluding most likely to the beast hiding inside her as well.
The question of whether Willow has the generation curse or not has two elements to consider – the first is the biological side of things, and the second is her upbringing. If the curse is moving through the bloodline, as stated by Noah when he talks about his grandfather, it is highly probable that the curse is some genetic disease moving from one descendant to the next. So, when looking at it from that angle, it seems only logical to assume that Willow will showcase the same mutation when she comes of age. On the other hand, there is also the factor of her traumatic childhood and how she witnessed Noah being an abusive father and husband at times. It brings into play the psychological aspect of her childhood and how it might influence Willow’s behavior moving forward in life as an adult.
There is no certainty that the protagonist is freed from the curse simply because she committed patricide and ended things before Noah killed her mother. That still does not remove the doubts surrounding her own case, as when the time comes, she may have to embrace the same type of life as Noah and hide in the woods, hoping she does not kill her future family or anyone nearby. It casts a massive shadow over the young girl, one that she seems to share with herself. Thus, when her mother holds out her hand in the final scene, Willow seems hesitant to move towards her. More than likely, even if she may not be a werewolf yet, she feels that something terrible will happen with time, which is why she shows reluctance. For now, however, she remains optimistic as they leave the isolated abode behind.
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