The Beast in Me review: Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys face off in compelling power games

Claire Danes gives really good crying face.

There’s no one else who can make their lips and chin quiver with as much gusto as Danes. Since her breakout role as Angela Chase in My So-Called Life more than three decades ago, we’ve become acquainted with her preternatural ability to really give in to the ugly weep.

As Juliet, when she discovers Romeo dead, as Amy in The Family Stone but most definitely as Carrie Mathieson in Homeland. Boy, they really put her through it over eight seasons of Homeland.

She’s reunited with Howard Gordon, one of the writers who developed Homeland, in Netflix thriller The Beast in Me, on which he’s the showrunner and she the lead, which means we, once again, experience the full force of Danes emoting. There is, indeed, crying.

It’s actually such a comfort at this point because she will never let you down. No matter the project, she will envelope you in a performance that seems to have its own magnetic field. You can’t pull away.

Her talent is crucial to a show like The Beast in Me, and as Aggie, who isn’t always the most sympathetic character. With the exception of Little Women’s saintly Beth, Danes’ most memorable roles have been these complex people who both entrance and repel.

If you can’t get onboard with Aggie, despite all her issues, you have no

Aggie is a best-selling writer who has been existing in near-isolation since the death of her young son in a car accident some years earlier. She’s divorced from her wife (Natalie Morales), her house is in desperate need of work, and she’s very behind on the pages she’s promised her editor.

She’s none-too-pleased when a new neighbour moves in, and his dogs aggressively bark at her, and he immediately starts throwing around his money, insisting on paving a jogging path through the woods behind her house.

Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys) isn’t just arrogant and entitled, he’s also famous for having a dead wife whose death he was suspected of. He was never charged but the rumours have plagued him ever since, and is having an impact on a massive property development that he and his father (Jonathan Banks) are pushing in New York City, and has since stalled.

Aggie finds Nile’s ruthlessness repulsive but intriguing. She recognises in him a darkness that she doesn’t want to acknowledge in herself.

She agrees to write her next book about him, an arrangement that works for her because she’s a fascinating subject matter and who will sell, and for him because he’s looking for reputation rehab.

As far as the story goes, the beats are relatively familiar as Aggie struggles with the question of whether Nile did or didn’t kill his previous wife, especially after a drunk FBI agent (David Lyons) shows up at her door, warning her to stay away from him.

All that is not without merit but it’s also a pretty familiar thriller tropes. What makes The Beast in Me distinct are the performances from Danes and Rhys, and the interplay with between their characters, always laced with a danger and edge.

They’re playing each other, and they’re both too smart to not know that about their opponent. The joy for the audience is in the back-and-forth power game being portrayed by two actors who really know what they’re doing.

Rhys’s Nile is menacing and dead-eyed, while deftly deploying his imposing charm. It’s not that Rhys is playing against type, because we have seen him as Phillip in The Americans commit acts that are not hunky-dory, but this is another level of threatening for the Welsh Emmy winner.

Like Aggie, we find Nile too beguiling to dismiss, while aware that he’s drawing us into a place we probably don’t want to be.

The twists can be pulpy and a little melodramatic, but you’ll never tire of watching Danes and Rhys face off against each other.

The Beast in Me is streaming on Netflix