Tyne Rafaeli

The tension in The Beast in Me (2025) comes from watching Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys test one another. The directors favour psychological unease over getting on with the investigation, allowing the encounters between the leads to carry the series. We felt uneasy watching them together because Lyle Vincent’s cinematography gives those encounters the threatening feel of a horror film. Rafaeli directed two episodes; Lila Neugebauer and Antonio Campos also direct. We cannot assign every effective choice to her, but the attention to actors fits her theatre work.

Before television, Rafaeli established herself directing new plays, with Usual Girls (2018) an important early production. She moved into television from 2020 while continuing to direct plays, including Epiphany (2022) and The Coast Starlight (2023). In rehearsal she works physically and collaboratively with actors, exploring character through the text. That is useful preparation for scenes in which two performers must keep an audience uncertain about what they want from each other.

The limitation of The Beast in Me is that its central pair keep circling after their relationship has stopped developing. Loren Weeks’s production design contributes to a glossy finish that makes the threat feel too comfortably packaged. Once the writing runs short, that polish leaves us watching carefully presented encounters without much reason to expect anything new from them.

Rafaeli’s stage work offers a reason to look beyond that particular frustration. The comedy and loss of Epiphany, and the lively ensemble staging of The Coast Starlight, suggest possibilities that this prolonged television stand-off does not much explore. We would welcome a screen production that gave her more of that tonal variety to manage. For The Beast in Me, go for Danes and Rhys, and allow for the stretches when even they need something else to do.