More Style, Less Substance

Film: Beyond the Black Rainbow
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

I am not by nature a contrarian. I do sometime take a contrary position on movies, though. Sometimes, that’s liking a movie that most people don’t like--Soldier, Pootie Tang, and Kung Pow are good examples of this. And, of course, there are films that are highly acclaimed that I don’t like. Under the Skin and The Killing of a Sacred Deer are examples that come to mind. To that list we’re going to add Beyond the Black Rainbow, a film that most people seem to like, and I can’t figure out why.

I’d love to do my normal here and give you a blow-by-blow discussion of what happens in the film, but not a great deal happens in this film. Ultimately, my problem with Beyond the Black Rainbow is that virtually nothing happens in it. This is a movie that has a massive synopsis on Wikipedia but could genuinely be summed up in a couple of sentences. A researcher driven insane by an experiment imprisons a young psychic who he becomes obsessed with while she does her best to escape her imprisonment. There, I did it in one.

This is a style over substance movie, and there is a lot of style here. The film was made in 2010 but takes place in 1983. It has a retro-future feeling to it, like a film that was made to look like what people thought the future was going to look like in the 1980s. It’s the main thing that works for me in the film. It’s essentially the same opinion I had for Under the Skin. It looks great, but it feels like all frosting, no cake.

The one-sentence summary above really is a summary of the movie. Barry Nyle (Michael Rogers) is the head of research at something called the Arboria Institute, an organization originally designed to help people achieve spiritual transcendence. It was created by Mercurio Arborio (Scott Hylands), who is now a drug-addled recluse essentially under the thumb of Nyle. Nyle’s main subject of study is Elena (Eva Allan). What we learn eventually is that Nyle went through a procedure that was supposed to enlighten him, but instead made him psychotic. Arboria, not bothered by this, subjected his infant daughter (Elena) to the same procedure, which turned her into a powerful psychic, an ability suppressed by a strange device in the institute.

And…that’s pretty much it. We see Nyle slowly lose his mind and start killing off people who he sees as standing in his way in terms of him starting a relationship with Elena. And Elena, who we learn has essentially spent her entire life trapped in a room or two in the institute, wants to get out by any means possible, including using her psychic abilities in those moments when they are not suppressed.

I want to like this movie. I really, genuinely want to like it and I gave it a solid chance to win me over. I watched this several years ago on a whim and was underwhelmed by it, so I was nonplussed when it suddenly showed up on the They Shoot Zombies list, meaning I had to watch it again to write it up. I’ve been putting it off for months because I remember finding it ultimately kind of vacuous, and here I am with exactly the same opinion.

Here’s an idea of what this was like for me. Beyond the Black Rainbow runs 110 minutes. At one point, I check the time, figuring that about 20 minutes worth of stuff had happened (although it felt like longer). It was longer. The movie was almost half over. Everything seems to take forever with this film, and we have to go for a very long time with not much happening until we get to the end…and it more or less just ends. The concluding moment, the big showdown that gets us to the credits is the equivalent of someone falling off his chair. All of that time for it to additionally shit the bed on the ending.

I know a lot of people disagree with me on this, and I’m fine with that. Like I said at the top, I’m not a contrarian by nature. I know there are critic types who go out of their way to hate beloved movies just so that they get the negative attention. I’m not doing that. Defend this movie as much as you like, and I won’t disagree with you. I wanted to like it the same way I want to like coffee every time I see someone drinking it. I just…don’t.

Why to watch Beyond the Black Rainbow: It has a cool retro-future aesthetic.
Why not to watch: Nothing happens.