Friendly Beast (2018)

While The Friendly Beast (2018) may sound like a family friendly film about a monstrous beast who turns out to be, you guessed it, friendly and then goes snowboarding with the teenage son while the parents work on their marriage, but we can assure you that this is not that kind of movie. No, this Brazilian film—titled O Animal Cordial in its native Brazil—is an intense thriller set over the course of a single night in the lives of a group of strangers all thrown together in a life or death situation in a small restaurant. Veronica (Camila Morgado) complains that her meat is undercooked, setting off a tense confrontation with the owner Inácio (Murilo Benício) and his waitress Sara (Luciana Paes). That tension is immediately broken when a pair of armed thugs (Humberto Carrão and Ariclenes Barroso) storm into the restaurant and turn the already fraught with tension crowd into a group of hostages in an elaborate robbery plan. The handful of customers in the restaurant must now decide to either work together to take down these hoodlums or play along with whatever their plan is. Murilo Benício's Inácio is not having any of the latter, that's for sure, as he takes justice into his own hands, stripping off his shirt and showing off his fit physique as he makes short work of the rowdy criminals... or so he thinks! We're not about to spoil The Friendly Beast for you here, other than to say that maybe there is indeed a titular friendly beast that shows up to save the day in act three!