The Crouching Beast: A WWI Spy Story That Mostly Just Crouches

Is it worth the watch?

If you have a thing for old-school espionage where everyone talks in sharp, clipped sentences, you might dig The Crouching Beast. It is not for the person who needs non-stop action or modern pacing, though. If you prefer your spy stories to feel like they belong in a library archive, you’ll probably be fine. If you’re looking for a thrill ride, honestly, just skip it.

The whole thing hangs on this American journalist getting caught up in a mess she didn't ask for. There is this one scene where the British spy shows up at her house, and the way the door creaks—man, it feels like it lasts for ten full minutes. It’s supposed to be suspenseful, but it just felt like the sound guy was really proud of that hinge.

The performances are… well, they’re very of the time. Everyone is acting like they’re trying to win an award for being the most serious person in the room. It’s not quite as charming as How Molly Malone Made Good, but it’s got its own weird, stiff energy.

Small moments that stuck

• The lighting in the prison-fortress scenes is surprisingly moody, even if the sets look like they’re made of cardboard.
• There is a moment where a character tries to hide a document, and they do it so slowly that I wondered if they were just doing a bit of performance art.
• The extras in the background look like they’d rather be literally anywhere else, which is kind of funny once you notice it.

I couldn't help but compare it to Upstream in my head, mostly because both movies have this habit of stopping everything just to have characters stare intensely at maps. I get it, geography is important in war, but do we need to look at the ink lines for that long? Sometimes I felt like the film was trying to convince me that the paper map was the real star of the show.

There is a lot of whispering. So much whispering. If you turn the volume up, you’ll hear the background noise, but if you turn it down, you miss the plot. It’s a classic problem, I guess. The dialogue feels like it was written in a hurry on the back of a train ticket, but somehow, it still kind of works if you don't think about it too hard.

It’s not a masterpiece, and it doesn't try to be. It just exists. Sometimes, that’s enough. Other times, you just want to go watch Finders Keepers instead and call it a night. 🤷‍♂️