Few do suffering like Claire Danes. Watching any drama she stars in feels like meeting up with a friend who has been through a breakup they just can’t get over: there comes a moment when you realise, “Oh no, she’s going to cry. It’s going to be tectonic. Can I cope with the sheer depth of her misery?!”
The brow crumples, the eyes scrunch, the lip quivers, the voice splinters. It’s gut-wrenching. That impressively pliable face can register about 13 different kinds of agony. And in The Beast in Me, Netflix’s new thriller about an author with a psychopathic neighbour, there is nowhere to hide, no way to prepare yourself. It happens in the opening scene, her face rearing up out of the screen, blood-spattered, eyes aghast, mouth moving, trying to take in something so horrible that we can only guess at it. Then it comes: a full-throated howl of despair that could rock you to the very core of your spleen.
