Beast
2019 · 7m
Directed by Natalie Peracchio
Genres: coming-of-age, dark comedy, drama
Tones: dark, melancholic, surreal
With no dialogue, a visually captivating short stages sibling rivalry at another level, as a younger child faces odds stacked starkly against her.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The no-dialogue constraint feels like a genuine formal choice rather than a gimmick, and watching a kid get psychologically demolished without a single word of explanation has a refreshing meanness to it—but it's also the obvious move, and that's what keeps Beast from cracking the contrarian ceiling.
Peracchio's restraint with language positions this squarely in a lineage of silent-or-sparse coming-of-age cinema, and the visual staging of power imbalance between siblings shows a clarity of formal intent that rewards close attention.
The decision to render sibling cruelty entirely through physical space and gesture—the way bodies occupy and claim territory—is what transforms a premise about kids fighting into something genuinely unsettling, and that specificity of approach is what separates this from a dozen other dark-kid shorts.
Reviews
The merit of 'Beast' is that it portrays violence within a dreamlike world without breaking the spell. If there's one thing Peracchio has done right in 'Beast', it is visual metaphor.