SERIES REVIEW – At first glance, Netflix’s new miniseries The Beast in Me looks like just another psychological thriller riding the true-crime wave, with the gossip machine orbiting a notorious billionaire and his missing wife. A few scenes in, though, it becomes clear that there is a lot more going on: a cat-and-mouse game between a grief-frozen writer and a frighteningly charismatic real-estate mogul, where every conversation nudges the balance of power a little further out of place. The series keeps asking where the line really lies between empathy and self-delusion, between the pursuit of truth and a self-destructive attraction, while slowly suggesting that the real beast may not only live next door, but somewhere inside us as well.

The Beast in Me is an eight-episode Netflix miniseries created by Gabe Rotter, whose credits include The X-Files. At the center of the story is Aggie Wiggs, a once-celebrated author who has been living in seclusion and unable to write a new book since the tragic death of her young son. That is when Nile Jarvis walks into her life, a real-estate titan with a terrifying reputation who was once linked to the disappearance of his wife, Madison, but was ultimately cleared in court. When Nile buys the house next door, Aggie suddenly has a new subject and decides to figure out who this man really is, the one the public has chosen to both demonize and idolize at the same time.

When Grief Pushes You Toward the Worst Possible Person

It is always a good idea to listen to your instincts. That is exactly what we keep wanting to tell Aggie Wiggs, Claire Danes’ heroine, as we watch episodes of The Beast in Me. Aggie is a once-celebrated writer whose career and private life were both shattered by the death of her son, and who has been living in a kind of half-shadow ever since. Her new book project focuses on the notorious Nile Jarvis, a wealthy real-estate mogul whose lion-hearted father still rules the family empire, and whom many people see at the same time as a thoroughly despicable man and a potential sociopath. Madison, his first wife, is officially just “missing”, the investigation has been closed, and on paper Nile is innocent, but in the eyes of the public he remains suspect number one to this day.

Crushed between grief and a fresh divorce, Aggie cannot get her own life back on track. She lives apart from her ex-wife, Shelley (Natalie Morales), the manuscript for the next book stubbornly refuses to take shape and a brutal case of writer’s block suffocates every attempt to work. As she starts to dig into Nile’s story, she is slowly pulled into the man’s complicated, toxic world, and the closer she gets, the shakier her conviction becomes that Nile really did kill his wife. The Beast in Me is therefore both a story about the privileges of the power- and money-soaked elite and about an obsessive search for the truth, in which the protagonist is willing to put herself on the altar if that is what it takes to get answers.

Two Heavyweights Trading Blows

It is obvious from the very first episode that The Beast in Me is built on two brutally strong performances, and thankfully, both Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys deliver at full power. Danes’ Aggie often recalls Kate Winslet’s character in Mare of Easttown: exhausted, frayed, frequently falling apart, but utterly relentless when it comes to work. Her grief is unresolved, the guilt over her son’s death is slowly choking her, she is two years late delivering her next book and the bills are piling up. Her first book was a huge success – so much so that Nile and his new wife Nina (Brittany Snow), are both fans. When Nile moves into the house next door, it is like someone flips a switch in Aggie’s head: she sees a new subject, a new obsession, a new chance to be the one who finally writes the definitive story of the world’s most wanted monster.

Danes’ Aggie is driven, razor sharp, and brutally honest. She is not afraid to say to Nile’s face everything the tabloids have been whispering about him for years, and she refuses to swallow his evasions. She is the perfect sparring partner for Rhys’ Nile because she is not intimidated by the cloud of rumors around him, his mone,y or his status. Grief still hangs off her; her appearance is far from flawless, but when she is interviewing, she is like a blood-scenting hunting dog. She knows exactly which questions to ask to get him to open up, and the way she calmly locks eyes with him makes it crystal clear that she is not the one who is going to back down here.

Matthew Rhys, meanwhile, plays a Nile Jarvis who could freeze the blood in your veins. Cold, dismissive, spoiled – he is the embodiment of the rich jerk. Perfectly styled hair, immaculate suits, a new beautiful wife, a glittering real-estate empire: he is as easy to hate as he is strangely hard to look away from. Rhys’ performance is so menacing that it literally ties your stomach in knots at times. There is something deeply unsettling about him even when there is no hard proof he ever laid a hand on his wife. One lunch scene where he silently stares into Aggie’s eyes without blinking, or a dinner where he tears into a roast chicken with his bare hands like an animal – a moment that easily tops Denethor’s legendary tomato routine in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King – is enough to send the message without a single line of dialogue: this man is a predator.

Gothic Mood Turned Up To Eleven

The real strength of The Beast in Me is not only that it gives us two standout performances, but that it commits so completely to the gothic-tinged thriller vibe. The series is almost constantly unsettling, wrapped in a low-grade, suffocating sense of the unknown that hangs over every scene. Every single shard of truth Aggie manages to dig up only spawns more questions. In many ways, the plot follows the logic of a classic crime show, but the gothic elements – the silent, menacing figures, the dark stormy nights, the houses that are a little too beautiful and a little too spacious – add an extra layer that makes the whole thing feel distinct. Aggie and Nile’s homes are not just backdrops, they are active participants in the story, mirrors for all the buried secrets and unspoken tensions.

This unnerving atmosphere is what keeps the show in motion. The audience feels that something is badly off even while we are still fumbling around in the dark for the truth. No one really disputes that there is something wrong with Nile: he is bloodthirsty and ruthless in business, and empathy does not seem to be part of his vocabulary. But is it possible that we have simply misunderstood him, that the media turned him into a monster? That doubt really starts to bite once we get to know Nile’s family and his former in-laws. As more and more layers are peeled back from Madison – who she really was and how she treated the people around her – the truth that once looked so clear becomes murkier and murkier.

When Nile’s father shows up, the all-powerful Martin Jarvis (Jonathan Banks), the series suddenly shifts half a gear into a mini-Succession dynamic. Martin is an industrial titan who is just as lethal when it comes to power and control as his son. The Jarvis clan’s influence extends across the entire city, which only deepens the myth that surrounds them. Martin clings obsessively to his own legacy: he remarries late in life and fathers two young sons, all while never loosening his grip on Nile for a second. The pressure he heaps on his firstborn and the impossible expectations he sets are the only moments when we see cracks appear in Nile’s seemingly unshakable armor. All of that becomes extra set dressing layered onto an already complex, compelling story.

“If you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you” (Nietzsche)

It would not be accurate to say that the central mystery of The Beast in Me will twist you into knots so much that you spend days obsessing over every single plot turn. There is nothing earth-shatteringly surprising in Madison Jarvis’ ultimate fate; the real power of the series lies in how it unpacks the road that leads there. Once Aggie throws herself into the project, a drunk FBI agent shows up outside her house in the middle of the night: Brian Abbott (David Lyons), who warns her not to trust Nile because he is far more dangerous than she realizes. In that first encounter, the alcohol pretty much demolishes Brian’s credibility, but even then it is obvious that he is grabbing hold of a crucial thread in the story.

As Aggie grows closer to Brian, who slowly becomes a trusted confidant, both of their lives sink deeper into Nile’s web and the aftershocks of Madison’s death. Brian continues the investigation on his own, wrestling with his own demons, while Aggie gets increasingly tangled up in Nile’s world and moves through his home almost like a family member. With every new piece of information – including one particularly shocking discovery around the third act – the show ratchets up the tension another notch. In the endgame, we not only learn the truth about what actually happened to Madison through a powerful series of flashbacks, but also the details of Aggie’s own tragedy and how her story with Nile finally ends. From the first minute to the last frame, it is hard to look away from the screen: whether it is the performances, the twisty storytelling or the suffocating mood that somehow manages to be both repellent and seductive at the same time, this is the kind of series you can easily binge in a single weekend if you love dark, character-driven crime stories.

-Gergely Herpai BadSector-