Beast Beast is an independently-produced debut film written and directed by Danny Madden, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020. In the film, arguably the most thought-provoking aspect is its structure. Instead of putting the majority of the focus on only one of the characters, the film puts equal spotlight on three main characters: Nito, Krista, and Adam. Through this structure, the film is able to focus more on the perspective of a small southern community, rather than solely on one individual.The movie starts out with these three people leading three separate lives, and towards the end, their lives intersect in a horrible way. A major theme in the film is the decisions these three characters choose to make,and the emotions that they are feeling; both before their choices and as a consequence of them. The tragedy that occurs is the result of several bad decisions, and one person’s anger, and it shows us how the resulting tragedy spreads beyond the people initially involved and affects an entire community.

Krista, Nito’s girlfriend, is in the same grade as him. We are shown that she has had a lifelong passion for acting, seeing home movies she has made starring herself dating back to when she
was a young child. She is currently acting in the high school play.

Nito is in high school and is new in town. We are shown videos of him doing high-risk tricks on his skateboard, which indicates that he is a daredevil. We will later see that his daredevil mentality can be rewarding, but also damaging. In this movie, Nito will start to live a sort of “double life”. In his day life, Nito spends time with Krista, and enjoys wholesome activities with her. In contrast, in his nightlife, Nito hangs out with a group of lawbreaking people, engaging in crimes such as burglary and shoplifting. His dangerous nightlife is what leads to his downfall.

Adam is 24 years old and lives with his parents. He lives in the same neighborhood as Krista and was friends with her as a kid, even helping her make home movies. He now has a great interest in guns, and is embarking on making a career posting informative Youtube videos about gun safety and usage. Adam’s anger and frustration build up throughout the film, and later on, his anger causes him to make a decision that ends three lives.

At the beginning, Nito meets another kid living in his new building, Yoni, who is a few years older than Nito. The two talk and soon become friends. This friendship is what ultimately causes Nito’s double life. Nito feels accepted by Yoni, and he wants to feel accepted by the group of lawbreakers with whom Yoni keeps company. This yearning to belong to Yoni’s click is what mainly compels him to make poor decisions and participate in their illegal activities. Nito is willing to take these huge and self-endangering risks in order to obtain friendship, showing the negative side of his daredevil mentality.

Yoni brings Nito to a wild, overcrowded party. There, Nito meets Krista and her friend.They had been impressed by seeing videos of Nito’s daredevil skateboarding tricks, and from there, Nito and Krista begin to hit it off. Apparently, a neighbor called the cops due to the party’s loud, blaring music, and while Nito and Krista are dancing together, in the police rush. This creates total chaos in the packed party, and during the confusion, a guy grabs Krista, presumably with the intent of sexually assaulting her. Nito sees this and tackles the guy, fighting with him until the cops intervene. Nito ends up being arrested, getting released the next day. This is what ultimately kickstarts Nito and Krista’s budding romance.

Throughout Beast Beast, it is shown that Nito is a huge risk-taker, from the aforementioned harmless skateboarding tricks, to escalating criminal pursuits. The risk he took in the party scene was a good risk, and a noble one at that. He got into a fight with another person knowing that police were present, and was willing to take the consequences of getting arrested in order to prevent something horrible from happening to Krista. This shows that Nito is capable of taking good and heroic risks, despite the fact that he often takes stupid and dangerous risks as well. These stupid risks are what lead Nito to his demise, but the smart risks are what could have led him to a better life. What makes Nito a much more complex character than his nightlife friends is that Nito, while joining them in their crimes, has potential. Yoni, Lena, and Jarrett are aimless people who don’t seem to have any ambition beyond having fun. Nito, in contrast, has a passion (skateboarding) and, as shown in the party scene, is capable of being heroic and just an all-around good guy.

The next day, Nito gets into a car with Yoni and another guy named Jarrett. The car is driven by Lena, a 21-year old with a baby. They go to a convenience store, where Lena tells Nito and Yoni that she will buy alcohol for them, and they can buy food. Nito doesn’t have any money, so Yoni has him smuggle boxes of Hot Pockets by hiding them under a heavy coat. This scene marks the beginning of Nito’s ultimately fatal descent into crime. Nito doesn’t become a criminal out of selfishness or greed; he joins in the group’s law-breaking largely due to peer pressure. He wants to remain friends with Yoni, and seemingly the only way to accomplish that is to go along with his group of friends and do what they want.

Later on, Nito, Lena, Yoni and Jarrett break into a warehouse and steal several boxes of merchandise. During the heist, Nito takes only one item he needs for himself: a new pair of sneakers, as it is shown earlier on that his current ones have holes in them. What this shows is that Nito isn’t really partaking in the burglary out of selfishness. He steals something that he needs but most likely can’t afford and also does it because of peer pressure and a desire for acceptance.

Adam, like Nito, is a suggestible person. Nito, as mentioned earlier, is suggestible to his new group of friends because he wants to be accepted, to belong to their click. That’s why he falls to their peer pressure, and therefore takes the stupid and dangerous risks that cost him his life. Adam is similarly suggestible to the internet. He wants the Youtube gun community to accept him, and he wants to gain a large fanbase. His frustration at being unable to achieve this is what drives him to kill three people. The internet does not cause the killing to happen directly; rather, it is what puts Adam in the infuriated mental state that clouds his judgment.

When the movie’s focus changes to Adam, he is finishing up filming a new video in which he enthusiastically describes killing a charging warthog with his rifle. This is a complete change of style from his previous uploads. Normally, Adam avoids a “ mainstream “ video presentation, his videos being very informative and educational but basic and unexciting.This time, he brings a more high-energy approach, in which he glamorizes the use of guns in the hopes his channel’s views will increase with this change in style. His father knocks on the door, and tells him that he will not be financially supporting him any longer, as he does not believe that Adam’s Youtube career will be successful. This infuriates Adam, who punches a hole in the wall. This scene is where Adam’s frustration begins to grow more and more violent, and proves that he is capable of violent outbursts.

That night, Adam looks at the comment section of his warthog shooting video. He finds it filled with negative comments and trolling, and this enrages him intensely. He responds to the hate by shooting an angry video, shouting at and flipping off the camera. This is the headspace that Adam will be in when his house is later broken into, affecting his judgement.

The next afternoon, Nito gets into Lena’s car with Yoni and Jarrett as usual. Lena has apparently gotten fired from her job, and she is furious. In the car, she claims that she got fired for vaping and that she believes her boss took the vapes for herself. She is driving the other three to her ex boss's house for them to get her vape back. Nito expresses discomfort with this idea, but Lena yells at him to shut up. As she stops the car, we find out that Lena’s ex-boss is Adam’s mother.

Lena stays in the car while Nito, Yoni, and Jarrett break into the house. Nito is clearly uncomfortable doing this, yet he does it anyway instead of bailing out, for the same reason he started committing crimes in the first place: peer pressure. While not truly friends with Lena or Jarrett, Nito participates in whatever crimes they want to commit in order to maintain his friendship with Yoni. While Nito is a good person who can take risks that can be noble and heroic, he also takes risks that are reckless and self-endangering, and this time, the latter kind of risk leads to a horrendous and tragic consequence.

When the three get into the house, Nito is the only one who is even the slightest bit uneasy. He wants to find what they came in for as quickly as possible so that they can leave, but Yoni and Jarrett treat the situation as a joke. They wander around the house looking for stuff to steal, and get beer out of the fridge. Unbeknownst to them, the house is not empty, as Adam is upstairs in his bedroom; uploading his angry response video to Youtube and still in a furious state of mind.

Adam hears the three of them talking, and gets his gun before going downstairs. Without saying a word, he immediately guns down first Jarrett and then Yoni, the bullets going straight through their hearts. Adam was clearly shooting with the intent to kill. Still intensely frustrated with the internet trolls and with his parents, Adam almost certainly would have been more rational had he been in a calm state of mind, perhaps merely shooting to injure the three and then calling the police.

Nito, terrified for his life, manages to find a hiding spot for a brief period of time. When he attempts to make a break for it, Adam sees and shoots him down as well. When Adam guns down Yoni and Jarrett, it can be argued that he was acting in self-defense. They were intruders in his home, and for all he knew, they could have been armed as well. But with Nito, it went beyond self-defense. Nito was running away from the house, so he clearly was no longer a threat to Adam or his property. He could have shot Nito in the leg or something similar, to leave him incapacitated while he called the cops, but instead he went on the offensive and shot to kill.

Krista is coincidentally walking down the sidewalk past Adam’s house right as Nito gets shot. She rushes to Nito’s side, and he dies before her horrified eyes. Krista sees Adam looking on, and his expression is calm and uncompassionate. Seeing Adam kill Nito with no remorse stuns and enrages Krista. She has known Adam since she was little. They used to make home movies together, and now she has seen him murder someone she loved. These emotions become Krista’s motivation for the actions that follow.

Witnessing this event has an immediate, traumatizing effect on Krista. She is now depressed and angry, not at all the person she used to be. When the principal meets with her and tries to get her to seek counselling for her trauma, Krista swears at her in response and even kicks her desk as hard as she can. The death of Nito has damaged her life horribly.

Meanwhile, Adam’s life changes for the better. When the news of the incident gets nationwide coverage, he gets overwhelming support from other gun owners, and his Youtube has a huge boost in popularity. Therefore, he earns more money from ad revenue and is able to increase his video-making budget. Krista sees how much support he is getting, and also how he is living with impunity and without guilt, and she is infuriated. This spurs Krista to execute a plan that will force Adam to face a legal consequence.

Krista comes to the town courthouse, where Adam is getting an award from a local pro-gun association. They believe that Adam was honorably defending his life and property by shooting and killing the three intruders. When Adam goes to the restroom, Krista follows.

There, Krista takes Adam’s wrists and presses his hands against her throat. She then starts screaming, and when the police rush in, it looks as if Adam is strangling Krista. Adam is then promptly arrested. After, the movie ends by showing that Adam is on house arrest and awaiting trial. In Beast Beast, the major decisions that all three main characters make are affected by their emotions. But unlike Nito and Adam, whose emotions spur them to make terrible decisions, Krista makes a decision that pays off for her: to frame Adam so that he is held legally accountable for something.

What Beast Beast succeeds at so well is showing how poor decision-making can have disastrous results, and it also shows how emotions that people feel can cause poor decisions to be made. Nito was talented and truly had potential, but his yearning for acceptance and friendship got him into the wrong crowd of people, a crew whose peer pressure eventually brought his life to a sudden halt. Adam had good intentions and wanted to educate people on gun safety through the internet, but his frustration and anger grew to consume him, and he made a horrible decision to kill Nito when killing him was not necessary. The events occurring throughout the film conspire together to ultimately cause a horrible tragedy, a tragedy made all the worse because it could have been prevented by better decisions.