Available from Scream Team Releasing here
A small Ohio town is seeing its homeless population decimated by an animal so two young women decide to do something about it.
Written by Dusty Austen and Athena Murzda and directed by Austen, The Beast of Walton Street is a take on a classic monster moved to a small town in Ohio and led by two young characters who aren’t as experienced with fighting beasts as they probably should be. The writing here works but the fact that what the beast is has been spoiled in the marketing does the film a disservice. A bit more mystery around it may have help this viewer get more into the film and allowed for more surprises. The writing beyond that is more than decent and the direction work, so this may be nitpicking.
The cast here brings the story to life with Mia Jones shining here and doing great work and Athena Murzda also doing quite well. These two leads work well together and bring characters meant to connect with a younger adult audience to life in a good way. Of course, to some of us, they come off a bit more whipper snapper than expected, but this could be due to getting old. In terms of late teens/early 20s characters they work their way through the story and emotions well and make the film easy to watch. The rest of the cast here works quite well too.
The film’s practical effects look great here from early on. The first of the ooey gooey goodness shows that the folks behind the film and the effect really wanted it to look great and definitely love practical effects. These, along with the performances, are shot beautifully by cinematographer Aaron Pagniano (and team) who really does the most of the lighting, holiday lights and other sources, to bring the images to life and work with the characters pretty well. On the other side of things, the music is also decent when it comes to the score, but the pop songs just feel completely out of place. The first one is cute and a bit of fun, but the next few feel out of place and quite literally kill the mood and the tension in their scenes. Some more classic score here would have likely followed the mood and enhanced it better.
The Beast of Walton Street (or St. as seen on some websites) is decently entertaining, has some good performances, and the cinematography is at times beautiful. The story has a few hiccups here and there and letting the beast be a mystery would have helped. Overall, the film is entertaining and worth checking out.