The Beast in Me Review: Who’s the Monster?

In Netflix’s twisty eight-episode thriller The Beast in Me, Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys are neighbors hiding dark secrets.

Aggie Wiggs (Claire Danes, The Essex Serpent) hasn’t written a word since her young son’s death left her hollowed out. This Pulitzer Prize-winning author now putters around her perpetually unfinished Oyster Bay house. When real estate mogul Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys, Cocaine Bear) moves in next door, trailing whispers about his first wife Madison’s disappearance, Aggie finds herself drawn to dangerous proximity. Their first clash comes over something mundane: Nile wants to build a jogging path through their shared backyards. Aggie refuses, partly from principle but mostly because she recognizes his desperation and enjoys denying him. He tries different angles of persuasion, always acknowledging that it’s all performance. Each interaction becomes a chess move in an increasingly dangerous game.

While Nile courts Aggie’s approval for both his jogging path and his reputation, he’s juggling a bigger prize: Jarvis Yards, a development project crucial to his family empire and nervous investors. The FBI agents monitoring the situation include Brian Abbott (David Lyons) and his supervisor Erika Breton (Hettienne Park, The Last of Us), who have history with the Jarvis family dating back to Madison’s vanishing. Abbott has been forbidden from continuing his case against Nile, while Breton keeps a watchful eye on Abbott himself. Her involvement seems peripheral until it suddenly, devastatingly, isn’t.

What a cast the producers (including Jodie Foster and Conan O’Brien) have assembled here. Beyond the marquee names, Tim Guinee (Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1) brings menace as Nile’s hard-nosed uncle. Jonathan Banks arrives like thunder as Nile’s father, a mogul whose gravel voice suggests he’s bulldozed more than buildings to protect his son. But it’s the central trio that makes this sing. Danes channels grief into something feral. Yes, that famous trembling chin appears in every episode, sometimes before the title card rolls. She wields it like a precision instrument. She makes Aggie’s unraveling feel both inevitable and shocking. This woman can barely speak to her ex-wife Shelley (Natalie Morales, My Dead Friend Zoe) yet finds herself energized by proximity to potential evil.

Rhys feeds off Danes’s discomfort like a vampire at a blood bank, playing Nile as the kind of man who views winning over a hostile neighbor as sport. He’s terrifically slimy, making you genuinely question whether he’s capable of murder even as evidence piles up in contradictory directions. The revelation here is Brittany Snow (Barron’s Cove) as Nina, Nile’s second wife. She takes what could’ve been a throwaway role and gives it real teeth. She’s magnetic in every scene, making you miss her whenever she’s absent.

Cinematographer Lyle Vincent adapts seamlessly between the series’ multiple directors, particularly highlighting the stylistic differences between Antonio Campos and Tyne Rafaeli. Campos favors staccato shots catching fingers hitting individual keys. Rafaeli prefers smoother movements. Vincent maintains visual cohesion throughout.

Production designer Loren Weeks and set decorator Michael Nallan transform Aggie’s house into a physical manifestation of her psyche: unkempt, light-starved, perpetually under construction. Arjun Bhasin’s costume design draws clear class lines. The Jarvis family drapes itself in creamy cashmeres while Aggie shuffles around in the same worn coat. Each piece feels personally tailored to its wearer’s interior life. The editing team deserves particular credit for maintaining tension across eight episodes without resorting to cheap cliffhangers. The show’s smart pacing means you’ll likely devour this in one compulsive sitting.

The series excavates uncomfortable truths about that deep rage we all occasionally feel. Most of us successfully suppress it. But the one percent who act on it, who take no ownership of their actions, become the monsters in our midst. The Beast in Me is about accountability and the beasts we feed or starve within ourselves. Some are small, raging impotently at broken coffee machines on desperate mornings. Others could drag us places we don’t want to imagine if we loosened the leash.

At a time when everyone claims to seek truth while accepting comfortable lies, watching someone genuinely dig for answers feels almost radical. The show navigates elite circles where Pulitzer winners cross paths with property tycoons. Potential murder cover-ups extend through layers of privilege and protection. If Nile didn’t kill his wife, whatever Aggie uncovers might be worse.

This marks another triumph for Danes and Rhys, performers with proven TV pedigrees who still push themselves into uncomfortable territories. Rhys makes a magnificent villain precisely because he might not be one. He’s definitely a rich snob accustomed to getting his way, and watching Aggie refuse to budge on the smallest things provides delicious friction. Danes remains fearless about taking her characters to unsophisticated places for authentic moments. Even if the entire series had been just these two in a room talking (as one episode nearly is), it would have been riveting television. The show keeps asking what we’re willing to become in the pursuit of justice, or vengeance, or even just certainty. The closer Aggie gets to the truth, the less she resembles someone who deserves to know it.

The Beast in Me is now available to stream globally on Netflix.