The heroine of “Beast,” a troubled young woman named Moll (Jessie Buckley), falls for a flagrantly troubled man named Pascal (Johnny Flynn). This prompts her proper sister to ask, “What is it about him?” Moll answers instantly: “His smell.” We must take her judgment on faith, since Smell-O-Vision movies never did catch on. But other senses tell us that these two will make a volatile couple; that they’re played by a pair of exceptional actors; and that this film, a formidably accomplished debut feature by Michael Pearce, takes us down familiar paths into a darkness all its own.
The...