DAN WEBSTER:
Aggie Wiggs is a troubled soul. Having once enjoyed fame and success as an author, the protagonist of the Netflix miniseries The Beast in Me feels haunted by the death of her young son in an auto accident. The fact that the accident occurred years earlier makes no difference. For some people, grief doesn’t work on a convenient timetable.
Furthermore, Aggie’s ongoing emotional outbursts have alienated her from her former wife, Shelley, leaving her living alone in a huge house set in an upscale, forested Long Island enclave that she’d purchased with money made from writing a critically acclaimed best-seller.
But now Aggie is at a loss. The book that she has been working to finish over the past couple of years, is going nowhere—a fact that is making her literary agent nervous, her publisher impatient and Aggie herself subject to the kind of anxiety attacks that hopelessness brings on.
Then, if things couldn’t get worse, a new couple moves into her neighborhood. And right away, the couple’s husband starts a campaign to build a jogging trail that would pass through her property, an intrusion Aggie doesn’t want. But he’s not the kind of man to take no for an answer.
This, though, turns out to be an opportunity. For the husband is none other than Nile Jarvis, the son of a well-known and shady real-estate tycoon. Nile is famous for other reasons, as well: He’s widely suspected of having murdered his wife Madison, who disappeared one day and whose body has never been found.
Badgered into meeting for lunch, Aggie finds herself presented with a surprise offer: Nile tells her she should write a book about him. And though she at first resists the idea, she changes her mind when an FBI agent warns her that Nile indeed is dangerous—and that she should be careful.
So, an intrigued Aggie sets off on a new writing project, and those of us who have decided to give The Beast in Me a chance find ourselves immersed in an ongoing mystery that is a study both of grief and the kind of sociopathy that fuels all studies in crime.
As created and executive-produced by Gabe Rotter, The Beast in Me unfolds over eight episodes, with Rotter and a team of writers and directors leading us through a complicated plot. At times that very plot stretches credulity, at other times Rotter et al. give us scenes glutted with graphic violence. But, too, the miniseries manages to keep us in the dark for nearly its full run about what is meant by the term beast and, ultimately, in whom it resides.
Aside from Aggie and Nile (played respectively by Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys) a number of characters prove important. Nile’s father Martin (played by Jonathan Banks) is the force behind a multi-million-dollar real-estate deal that also involves Nile. Martin’s brother Rick (played by Tim Guinee) serves as Nile’s security, and Nile’s wife Nina (played by Brittany Snow) both runs a gallery and supports Nile in his business efforts.
There are also the FBI agent (played by David Lyons) and his FBI colleague (played by Hettienne Park), both of whom have personal dealings with the Jarvises. Add in Aggie’s former wife (played by Natalie Morales), Aggie’s agent (played by Deirdre O’Connell) and Nile’s first wife (played by Leila George, seen only in flashback) and you have a plot that feels as if it employs maybe a few too many twists and turns.
Aggie’s struggle, though, serves to ground the overall story. She uses her grief as a weapon, blaming the young man (played by Bubba Weiler) who crashed into her car but, until she is forced to, never blames herself. And why? Because that’s how grief often works, denial being a common form of self-defense.
If her emotional journey taxes Danes’ acting abilities (she always feels on the edge of hysteria), then Rhys fares better at playing a charismatic, multi-layered character whom we learn the truth about perhaps a bit too early. The Welsh actor Rhys manages to make Nile into someone whom you want to like even if you suspect you shouldn’t.
In the end, when it comes to just exactly who has a beast inside them, Rotter seems to be saying that we all do. It’s only some of us who dare to let it out.
For Spokane Public Radio, I’m Dan Webster.
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Movies 101 host Dan Webster is the senior film critic for Spokane Public Radio and a blogger for spokesman.com.