(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)
Halfway through the riveting new Netflix cat-and-mouse thriller, The Beast in Me, there is definitive proof that the main suspect, Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys), is guilty of murder. It is a shocking reveal, but not the shocking reveal, as the person we witness Nile bludgeoning to death is not his missing wife. The only conclusion so far is that Nile is capable of the kind of crime the tabloid press has accused him of committing.
The husband is always the killer, right? This assumption is one that author Aggie Wiggs (Claire Danes) makes when she first meets controversial real estate developer Nile. The series, created by Gabe Rotter, plays with our perceptions and snap judgments, as there is zero physical evidence pointing toward Nile as suspect.
The last 10 minutes of the series’ midway point in Episode 4 offer an edge-of-the-seat one-two punch. First, Nile’s psychotic tendencies are revealed. Then, a visual straight out of a horror movie is delivered when Nile’s face appears at Aggie’s window in the dark. Aggie isn’t the only one who jumped out of her skin when she saw him there.
Nile’s reasoning for this impromptu late-night visit to his neighbor is that he’s had a “hell of a day” and could do with a drink. Aggie and Nile’s paths originally crossed thanks to proximity: Nile moves in next door and immediately flexes his ultra-wealth and power. Aggie is resistant to his charm, but curious enough about Nile’s infamy to have lunch with him. Like Nile, Aggie is reeling from a tragedy. While the circumstances differ greatly, Nile gets under the writer’s skin, provoking both revulsion and fascination.
What begins as an intellectual game escalates when Teddy, the man Aggie blames for the accident that killed her young son, goes missing and is presumed dead. Authorities believe it is suicide, but Aggie sees Nile’s fingerprints all over it.
Under the guise of writing a book about the mogul, Aggie begins to investigate the murky waters where Nile swims. While the overall premise is familiar (and I can’t help but think of Robert Durst), the knotty central dynamic is a refreshing take on the genre. (Despite the contemporary setting, the character names sound straight out of an Agatha Christie work.) When Aggie begins to question whether she is using Nile as a vessel for her own guilty feelings, we follow her down this wobbly path.
Danes is an expert at playing someone whose mental health is called into question during an investigation, and here she reunites with Homeland co-creator Howard Gordon (who serves as showrunner). Sure, Carrie Mathison’s hunches on Homeland were often correct, but her process was unorthodox at best. Aggie also begins to unravel after her ex-wife, Shelley (Natalie Morales), accuses her of coming up with outlandish scapegoats—first Teddy, then Niles—rather than looking inward. But this is not the only source of growing uncertainty.
Like Aggie, by the fourth episode, I was beginning to think that Nile’s wife had died by suicide, and that the central twist in the Beast in Me is an innocent antagonist. Madison’s body was never found, but she did leave a suicide note. Not only that, but Madison’s parents are wholly on Nile’s side. It is this bombshell that stuns Aggie into reconsidering her entire book thesis—and crack open a bottle of whisky—but just as I was contemplating that alternative, a shocking act of violence left my jaw on the floor.
One thing is for sure: FBI Agent Brian Abbott (David Lyons) no longer has a jaw—or at least not in one piece. We don’t see the bloody aftermath, other than crimson spatter across Nile’s face, but the number of times Nile hit Abbott with his own gun paints a grim picture.
Timing is everything in a psychological thriller, and The Beast in Me isn’t content with one bombshell at the halfway point. The reason Abbott confronts Nile is that he has learned that Nile is responsible for Teddy’s staged suicide. Teddy isn’t even dead. A live stream shows Teddy tied up at an undisclosed location, seemingly at the hands of Nile. Well, I definitely didn’t see that one coming. Emmy winners Danes and Rhys are prestige TV titans, which might explain why I fall under both of their spells so quickly.
Aggie now questions not only her initial impression of Nile, but also her own motives for suspecting he killed Teddy. While Aggie is still in the dark (because Agent Abbott stupidly didn’t tell her what he found), we now know Nile has a bloody, bruised and breathing Teddy locked up somewhere. The huge revelation certainly proves he is capable of manipulating a scene to make it look like a suicide. Any of my lingering doubts that Nile didn’t stage his wife’s disappearance or that he is unaware of the incriminating and highly encrypted link to a live feed of Teddy on his laptop vanish when he flips into beast mode.
Having seen Matthew Rhys rack up a high body count as deep-cover KGB operative Philip Jennings on The Americans doesn’t lessen the impact of this violent outburst. In fact, because Philip’s guilt was so profound for the many lives he took, it makes this animalistic rage more shocking. Nile looms over the camera, never blinking, pummelling Abbott again and again.
Conveying from the start that Nile is charming yet menacing requires an actor who can effectively capture the dramatic shift between charisma and a dead, wide-eyed expression. Never has that been more apparent than Nile going from cold-blooded murder to stopping by Aggie’s house for an early-hours nightcap.
Given that Abbott’s death left my mouth agape, it would’ve been easy to smash to the credits. I would’ve let the next episode autoplay. But rather than end on the close-up of Nile looking down at the bloody corpse of the FBI Agent who would not quit, the final scene is this lovely moment between Aggie and Nile, which is even more disturbing.
The episode wraps up with the sweet tones of Patience and Prudence singing “Tonight You Belong to Me.” Considering the title of the song and the violence we just witnessed, this track, like Nile, is far more ominous than innocent.
Between bashing Abbott’s face in and stopping by for a late-night hang, Nile has scrubbed his face, washed the blood out of his hair, and changed out of the plush sky blue sweater for a black alternative. He looks more like a villain than ever before. Or maybe knowing what he is capable of has shifted my perspective; The Beast in Me is ready to pull the bloody rug out once more.
