Our current world appreciates speed and fervor, recent AI technology is used as an optimization tool over processes controlled by humans; in the movie's future controlled by AI, humans, on the other hand, are purged(modified) by the AI to optimize the overall societal system. A modestly clever idea from the writer. This is how the movie begins and this is the tool through which the movie justifies using time jumps and different worlds, without being too incoherent at face value. As the movie develops, and as the main point starts to show itself, this minor point plays no further important role, however.
The main premise is something very human: to find peace, we need to live with our past and make peace with it in the present. Whatever trauma might have happened, say in a relationship, which is the playground of the movie, without wholefully dealing with it and incorporating it to be a part of the narrative that makes us who we are, we are stuck in an unescapable pain that continues from day to day. Different persons have different ways of dealing with trauma, some kill the part of themselves that causes the pain, while others try to learn to live with the suffering.
To spell it out, the beast equals whatever we avoid and need to face in life. The movie shows two persons facing their own beasts and their different ways of incorporating the beast coherently into their present lives. One of them kills the beast, the other tries to live with it.
It is a clever idea to make these two persons their others beasts, as is often the case in relationships, and to climax the movie by showing their different ways of dealing with their beasts to be incompatible.
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