Have you ever loved someone so much that you could just “eat them up”? This common expression is not lost on Dutch film and television actor Gaite Jansen in her directorial debut, Beast—a seductive horror short that proves the only way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Literally.

“Beast is a primal translation of the experience of being madly in love. About confusing hunger for life with the hunger for another,” said Jansen, who audiences might recognize from acting roles in the historical gangster drama Peaky Blinders and cop show Line of Duty. “It is also about the desperate attempt to still that hunger.”

In an unraveling vignette of late-night hook-ups and coy dinner dates, the suspenseful short follows an affair between an enigmatic young woman and a married family man. The couple grows hungrier for each other as time goes on. But it is only in the closing frames that the audience discovers who has the bigger appetite

“This is not a film about how a woman cannot live without a man but about growing up,” said Jansen. “About the feeling of emptiness within yourself and the idea that someone else can fill this hole for you and save you from yourself. I was interested in showing that you are the only one who can fill the space within you. You are what you are hungry for.”