Parity Pipeline

Genre

Synopsis

BESTIA opens with EVA PEREIRA (late 30s) and her two children, AMELIA (8th Grade) and HUGO (5th Grade), hiking on an isolated forest trail. From around a bend in the trail, a terrifying half-human beast appears and with a scream rushes towards them. Eva reaches out to protect her children but to her astonishment finds herself melding with the beast and crushing her children in her salivating jaws. Waking up with a start beside her husband, CARL (40s), Eva realizes it is a dream. She solicits comfort from Carl but he sleepily dismisses her; a prominent physicist, he’s got an early flight to an important conference and can’t afford to lose any sleep. That next morning, Eva takes the kids to school and while chatting with her friends spots hot, new parent MARK ROBINSON and his daughter LEANA who’s joining 8th Grade. Intrigued by him, she sets off for work. Eva works at a biotech company where she is one of a team developing a treatment for Parvovirus B51, a zoonotic disease mainly affecting dogs but starting to affect humans. Eva and her work buddy OTTO commiserate over their boss, JIM FUCHS. Fuchs dismissively refers to Eva as a “dedicated mom” (i.e. less productive scientist), questioning whether she will complete her presentation for the upcoming conference. That afternoon Eva runs into Mark at their kids’ soccer game. She learns he’s British and a visiting photojournalist. When Eva and her kids arrive home, a passing dog violently bites Eva and disappears as rapidly as it appeared. Eva gets treated at the hospital with stitches, a rabies shot, and antibiotics. Despite receiving treatment for the dog bite, Eva starts to feel and act less and less like her normal self. The bite appears badly infected. Eva begins to smell, hear, and see more acutely. Her libido increases exponentially and she starts a feverish affair with Mark. Her temper flares aggressively towards family, friends, strangers, and especially towards her boss, Jim Fuchs, who’s rushing the lab’s new Parvovirus drug to market despite its dangerous side effects. At Amelia’s birthday party, Amelia and her friends gossip about Mark’s daughter Leana. In the following days, Leana confides to Eva that she’s pregnant. Later Carl, Amelia, and Hugo confront Eva about her affair. Eva visits Mark one evening, but refuses to let her in his apartment; she suspects another woman is inside. The next day, at the conference, she accuses Fuchs of putting profits before public safety and collapses at the podium from infection. She wakes up in the hospital. Carl arrives and they have a tearful reconciliation. In the middle of the night, Mark's phone calls her and she hears him talking to a woman. She rips out her IVs and, feverish, goes to his apartment where, through the blinds, she sees two bodies intertwined. Furious, she breaks the window and leaps inside: Mark is fucking his daughter, Leana. Eva attacks Mark but he pins her down and is suffocating her when Leana knocks him senseless and stabs him. Eva comes to in her home bedroom after a long hospital stay. Carl, Amelia and Hugo inform her she’s healed from the infection and then Carl leaves to take the kids to school. Eva falls asleep but is awakened by a distant buzzing. Searching the house, she finds the source: a burner phone hidden in the garage. A text on the phone demands money. Returning from taking the kids, Carl unlocks the phone at Eva’s request, revealing a multitude of sexts and hefty expenditures, and admits he’s become desperately entangled with a woman sexually and financially. Eva gets in the car and, weeping, starts driving. Arriving at a forested hillside, she parks and walks into the woods. As she walks, she smells something. She follows the scent, reaching the forest edge which abuts a golf course. She spots two men playing golf: one of them is her boss, Jim Fuchs, whose scent she recognized. He hits a ball wildly and it lands in the woods. Fuchs walks into the woods to look for it and is taken aback to see Eva there. He apologizes to her and hopes they can let bygones be bygones. A feral dog appears and sits down near them. Slowly several dogs encircle them. Eva tells Fuchs she needs to get home. As she leaves she lets out a long howl and the dogs rush Fuchs and tear him to shreds. Eva continues walking serenely back to her car.