BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW
Directed by Panos Cosmatos
Starring Michael Rogers, Eva Allan
Panos Cosmatos mind-bending début is a film that reveals itself to you in every sense (and sexual connotation) of the word. As it leads you deeper into into a phantasmagoria, the experience becomes as perverse as it is exhilarating. It seduces you into attuning yourself to its distorted frequencies and meeting it on its own terms. And when the house lights rise, you may just find yourself feeling slightly corrupted and perhaps inclined to echo the line: Ive seen what eyes cannot see.
In establishing its 1983 setting, Beyond the Black Rainbow commences with an orientation video for the Arboria Institute. Born of a dream to become reality, the facility promises to build a better you through New Age treatments. Transported inside Arboria, we see that it actually takes its cues from nightmares, with therapist Barry (Michael Rogers) tormenting Elena (Eva Allan), a young woman who possesses psychic powers. When Elena attempts an escape, she runs afoul of all of the horrors lurking inside Arboria.
Cosmatos directorial style alternates between hypnosis and shock therapy. Making masterful use of an analog synth score (in the key of early John Carpenter films) by Sinoia Caves, the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»writer-director capably lulls you into a trance-like state, only to bombard you with lurid images seemingly culled from the most sinister recesses of his imagination. And while lovers of genre movies will have a field day cataloguing the cinematic influences evident in Cosmatos work, their greatest pleasure will come from witnessing an astonishing new talent who has seemingly arrived fully formed.
Curtis Woloschuk
