poster

Beyond the Black Rainbow
Director: Panos Cosmatos
Year: 2012
TRT: 1:49

Reviewed: 10/12/2024
VIDEO REVIEW

This one is a dark trip. Drugs were definitely involved in the creative process here. While I pride myself in only drinkin for reviews, the ingestion of other substances may be more suitable to fully appreciate this one. Just follow it with some sunshine afterwards though.

There’s an organization that boasts being able to find your inner self, Serenity through Technology. And drugs. Seems a bit culty. Skip forward to 1983. There’s a girl in what can be described as a dystopian kind of laboratory prison. She seems to have something “extra” going on. Her creepy “doctor” is, well, creepy. Dr. Nyle is not normal. Well, nothing about this is normal. Not even the soundtrack.

This is definitely a throwback to early Cronenberg’s Scanners and Lucas’s THX 1138 in a lot of ways (the girl is actually called Subject 1183). Visually it does stand out, and is pretty interesting in that regard despite a lot of almost monochromatic and duotone kinda color palettes to much of the film. Just be warned if you’re susceptible to seizures, there’s a lot of pulsing going on. Audio design also plays a big part, from a John Carpenter kind of score early in the film to just kinda fucked up droning audio to build unease and suspense. The story is somewhat spare, to say the least. Interesting turn for how the ending comes to be? Not too surprising this is the first film by Panos Cosmatos, who goes on to direct Nic Fkn Cage in the drug-drenched film Mandy. This one? I dunno, smoke a bowl and be awestruck. It’s some Altered States kinda shit, but darker. Much darker. It’s the kind of movie you would find playing on the screens in a basement level gothy discothèque.


Great Scene: The unmasking of one of the robot guards. Unsettling, to say the least.

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