Movie Review: The Behemoth | HNN

The Rehemoth Movie Review by Matt Boiselle

The Behemoth – directed by Kai Bogatzki & written by Kai Bogatzki, Rapsodies & Orso Vesperini, & starring Beatrice Fletcher, Ryan Wichert & Johnny Vivash

Released August 25th from Cleopatra Venom, The Behemoth is a supernatural/cosmic horror film that definitely has some things going for it, but unfortunately, I came away feeling pretty mixed about this one.

The movie starts off with a young couple taking a holiday in a remote, snow-covered mountain village. Right from the beginning, there’s an unsettling feeling that something isn’t quite right. The isolation of the setting works really well, and the strange behavior of the locals and the presence of a secretive religious sect gradually make the whole place feel more and more sinister. I actually enjoyed the first half of the movie quite a bit. It’s a slow burn, and there’s a deliberate effort to build atmosphere rather than throwing everything at you immediately. The snowy setting, the secluded village and the mysterious disappearances all create a pretty effective sense of dread. You know something bad is coming; you just don’t know exactly what it is.

The problem for me is that the pacing becomes a bit of a struggle. There are stretches where it feels like the movie is taking a little too long to get where it’s going. I don’t necessarily mind a slow-burn horror movie, but I need that buildup to keep me invested, and there were definitely moments here where my attention started to wander. Once the religious sect and their ritual become the focus, the movie starts moving toward the more bizarre and blood-soaked territory promised by the premise. There are some pretty wild moments, and I appreciated that the filmmakers weren’t afraid to get strange with the supernatural elements. However, I never felt like the payoff completely lived up to the atmosphere that had been established earlier. That’s probably my biggest issue with The Behemoth. I liked the setup more than the actual payoff. There are some genuinely creepy ideas here, and the isolated mountain setting is perfect for this type of story, but I wanted the movie to give me a little more to sink my teeth into.

That said, I wouldn’t call it a bad movie. If you’re a fan of slower, atmospheric horror, cults, mysterious rituals and cosmic/supernatural weirdness, there is definitely enough here to make it worth checking out. It just didn’t quite hit the mark for me personally. In the end, The Behemoth is a pretty average horror experience. I liked parts of it, I liked the atmosphere, and there were moments where I thought it was heading somewhere really interesting. But by the time the credits rolled, I was left with that familiar feeling of “I really wanted to like this more than I did.”