No one can accuse writer/director Panos Cosmatos of not forewarning viewers that his first film would challenge the sensibilities. The opening credit sequence is a succession of human eyes, hurriedly expanding outwards as the camera fixates upon them. ('Open your eyes now!," the film implores.) If you’re going to make it to the end of this supremely, superbly even, weird sci-fi/stalker/medical-horror thriller, you’d better pay heed.
a full and complete science-fiction vision
Broken down into its most basic plot elements, Beyond The Black Rainbow reads as a rather standard mad doctor/abused patient horror flick. The pretty Elena (Eva Allen) is kept in lockdown by her shrink, Dr. Barry Nyle (Michael Rogers) at a communal facility known as the Aboria Institute. Here, Nyle can study Elena’s psychokinetic powers – and also exploit them, given he has some mental health issues of his own, not least a penchant for emotional and psychological sadism. The combined allure of Elena’s power and innocence turns Nyle’s fascination into obsession; when she tries to escape the facility, his evil fully manifests itself.
Cosmatos (son of the late George P. Cosmatos, director of Rambo: First Blood Part II and Cobra) spins these narrative components to increasingly strange effect, mostly via a Kubrick-ian use of a throbbing ambient soundtrack, miniscule dialogue, and abstract imagery. Rogers plays Nyle as a truly unnerving, soft-spoken Mengele-type manipulator; Allen’s Elena is already a tortured individual, psychologically crippled by her 'gift’ and controlled by a large glowing triangle which, when operated by Nyle, distorts her powers. Arboria is peopled by grotesque denizens who may or may not be by-products of Nyle’s treatment: these strait-jacketed crave human flesh (Elena’s close encounter with one such charmer is truly horrifying), and towering guards are revealed to be baby-faced distortions of the human form.
Cosmatos, showing unrelenting (some might say, misguided) commitment to his vision, then takes it up a notch when Nyle is reborn from a primordial black sludge, becoming a hairless, trench-coat wearing killer, his dark, inhuman obsession with Elena now externalised.
Ably assisted by his DOP Norm Li, Cosmatos has given full flight to a vision that has drawn its fair share of detractors. ('The movie looks like it was lit by lava lamps, scored on Moog synthesisers, written between bong hits and acted underwater," said this pithy Miami Herald reviewer.) There can be no denying that Beyond the Black Rainbow just will not be everyone’s cup of black tea.
It’s a full and complete science-fiction vision, though, the likes of which rarely surface in this era of focus-grouped blandness. That may go some way to explain why this insane world all takes place in an alternate version of 1983. The film opens with a pre-credit promotional clip for Arboria, presented in 4:3 ratio and scratchy in a way that only those who recall well-played VHS tapes would recognise, that captures the period perfectly. It was a time when this type of fresh vision was afforded credibility. Beyond the Black Rainbow probably won’t score Cosmatos a gig at the helm of a Hollywood summer blockbuster, but it will allow him to look back and say, 'If never again, I once got to make exactly the movie I wanted." Audiences who appreciate oddball first efforts from talents such as Lynch (Eraserhead), Cronenberg (Shivers) and Jeunet (Delicatessen) will be thankful.
