David Ayer’s The Heart of the Beast drops Brad Pitt out of war and into an Alaskan wilderness with a trusty dog. The woods surround them, and that’s all the audience needs. This movie has long stretches without dialogue, which works because the setting and wordless moments do a lot of the heavy lifting. But it is hardly arty; it’s an old-fashioned populist movie. Paramount knows its target demo is Taylor Sheridan on the streaming platform, watching AFC football on CBS.
It opens like an escape, but the adventure is anything but with what awaits. Pitt sets up camp in the woods, the cinematography is stunning, and for a few minutes it genuinely feels like a getaway. But you can sense that something is coming. The film lets that dread sit quietly beneath the beauty before it pulls the ground out from under him.
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The first real gut punch comes when he misses the plane after firing off a flare gun. That single moment is when you know he is in the long haul, and what was supposed to be a nice trip into the woods becomes a big-deal survivalist tale. We see nature stop being scenery and become an intense enemy, as wild animals, raging rivers, and even the woods are all against him. There’s a scene where he uses the dog and his own belt to pull a bone sticking out of his back back into place, and it’s rough to watch but also badass in the best way. You feel every second of it.
The sequence that’s going to stick with me is the coyotes stalking them. I’ve watched more horror movies than I can count over the past few months, and nothing in any of them got under my skin the way this did. It’s a predator sequence that understands the scariest monster is the one that waits.
At its core, The Heart of the Beast is about a dog and the bond that carries someone through some bad days, even if Brad Pitt can think of some worse ones in combat. David Ayer clearly understood that, and it shows in every frame.
Heart of the Beast is now playing in theaters nationwide.
