Beyond the Black Rainbow does something very strange. It’s goal is to sedate the viewer, and as the viewer fades into a neon nightmare, it slowly poisons the subconscious with psychedelic madness. If that sounds like a bad trip, assuredly it is not.
Released in 2010, Canadian Director Panos Cosmatos is less concerned with plot than atmosphere. It unfolds like a lost surveillance VHS tape from an alternate 1983. This glimpse into the past comes soaked in hallucinogens, corporate mysticism and sterile laboratories where enlightenment is conjured through technology. This can feel a bit alienating, and Beyond the Black Rainbow is not for everyone. Those who sit back and let the “acid kick in”, the film becomes a cinematic trance that leads the viewer through cosmic horror and philosophical dread.
The Institutional Control of Enlightenment
The Aboria Institute lies at the heart of the film. This mysterious research facility founded by visionary guru Dr. Mercurio Arboria promises a future where science and spirituality merge. Human consciousness, and more importantly happiness, can be elevated beyond its biological limitations. If that already sounds suspect, the milk goes bad decades later. What’s left is a soulless fortress of sterile walls, oppression and despair. Dr. Arboria is long gone from the picture. The facility is now run by Dr. Barry Nyle, an unsettling researcher played with cold minimalism by Michael Rogers. The performance could not be more sublime as Rogers suffocates every scene with a subliminal projection of evil.
Within the confines of the facility is a young woman names Elena. She sits alone in a clinically immaculate room stripped of all personality. The triangular room feels like a shrine to psychological domination. Elena possesses extraordinary psychic abilities, and Nyle has spent years attempting to control or suppress them. The stage is set for a tale of escape and rebellion, but instead Cosmatos tells a story of cosmic forces that can strip the humanity from flesh and bone leaving only an empty shell.
The exposition is minimal, and forces the audience to parse the history of the Arboria Institute through fragments of thought, corporate training films, hypnotic monologues and flashbacks. This loose narrative hangs on a skeleton of vibrant colors, rhythmic drones, non-sequiturs and deafening silence.
Like anything that promises transcendance, The Arboria Institute is simply an outer shell that hides something monstrous.
Atmosphere Over Narrative
Beyond the Black Rainbow refuses to behave like a normal movie. So much so that in the few moments that it breaks from its trance feel like being hit with a bucket of ice water. Scenes stretch out far longer than expected. Characters speak slowly, sometimes barely at all. Hallways glow with oppressive neon reds and blues, while analog synthesizers hum like distant machinery inside the viewer’s skull. This is probably as good a place as any to give massive credit to Jeremy Schmidt, keyboard player for Vancouver-based rockers Black Mountain. The soundtrack is absolutely majestic. It threatens at every moment to pound the senses into submission through repetition, yet it never sounds tired.
If you have never heard Black Mountain, it’s about time that you asked somebody.
The film’s pacing is almost punishing as it builds tension through sensory immersion. The hypnotic experience feels closer to a dream episodically interrupted by other dreams… or worse nightmares. One may ask themselves if they have the stamina to make it through, but those that fully give themselves to the vibe will be prepared for the task. Those unable to make the commitment already dropped out at the 15 minute mark. They will not be missed. In that, the audience reaction is divided, if not completely polarized. Some viewers find the pacing maddening. Others recognize it as a deliberate artistic choice: the film isn’t telling a story so much as inducing a psychological state.
The Retro-Futurist Aesthetic
The Arboria Institute itself becomes a character; presenting an endless maze of sterile corridors and glowing chambers. Its architecture echoes the cold minimalism of 1970s and 1980s futurist design, where utopian ideals often masked societal reality. With this retro-futurist aesthetic, Cosmatos constructs a world that looks as if it jumped from the pages of Isaac Asimov into the design lab of a Kubrick film. More on the films influences later. It evokes the scientific promise of the 1960s intertwined with the subversive evils of MKULTRA.
Analog technology dominates the environment. CRT monitors, primitive computer interfaces, and dimly lit laboratories that feel decades behind modern research facilities. Buttons and switches are large and blocky… just as we liked them back in the day. It comes from a time where we have conquered the mysteries space and science, but can’t yet figure out how to work with plastic. It feels wholly authentic and completely engrossing.
Wearing Its Influences On Its Sleeve
While watching Beyond the Black Rainbow it couldn’t be more apparent to an astute cinema buff that Cosmatos if freely pulling from a catalog of killer influences from his past. In fact. When struggling to find a concise way to describe the film, it’s like David Cronenberg and David Lynch did acid together one night, and then having a child together. The film has all of the grainy texture of Inland Empire (2006) as well as the uncomfortable silence and awkward lingering in shots. It does this while calling back the techno-futurist collision with psychology that Cronenberg loves with just a hint of the body horror that he is known for.
While basking in the throbbing blue and red glow of the lights inside The Aboria Institute, it’s easy to see an intersection with Argento’s Suspiria (1977). In other nods to his work, Elena’s portrayal feels very much like that of Jennifer Corvino (Jennifer Connelly) in Argento’s Phenomena (1985); a young woman with immense power in a sprawling world of uncertainty. What more the harsh juxtaposition of “Angel Dust” by Venom evokes the same vibe as when Argento breaks in “Flash of the Blade” by Iron Maiden.
Coming back to Kubrick, the sterile environment of the Arboria Institute has much in common with the clean lines and bright whites of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). While less obvious, the concept of architectural horror creeps though as well. Just like the Overlook Hotel, the sprawling expanse of the Arboria institute with no real concept of how the Elena’s position relates to any external vantage point makes her plight seem insurmountable. There is a exhilarating sense of relief, intentional on Cosmatos’ part, when Elena finally breaks through the side of the Arboria Institute, feeling the cool of night on her face for the first time.
Just prior to reviewing Beyond The Black Rainbow the film Begotten (1995) had crossed my path. One of the standout aspects of Begotten is the washed out, hyper-exposed bleakness of the film. Cosmatos uses a similar look during his flashback that reveals the true nature of Dr. Nyles and the Arboria Institute. The similarities couldn’t be more apparent. Cosmatos stated that the look “was a perfect look for the flashback because I wanted it to feel like a fading and decayed artifact.”
Obviously, Beyond the Black Rainbow is 5/5
Absolutely not. As brilliant as this film is, and it is brilliant, it seems to sputter into a totally lackluster ending. While the movie does close all of the necessary loops, it fails to do so with the same savoir faire that the rest of the film enjoys. Beyond the Black Rainbow explores the transcendence of intellectual spiritual reality. It suggests that there is a cross-dimensional reality that would shatter human consciousness if it could only be witnessed.
Dr. Nyle is the only man to have crossed this boundary, and in his final epiphany Dr. Nyles chooses to go on a homicidal rampage; a very short and inconsequential rampage. His ultimate to pursue his secret love interest. And just like that, the movie hits it final notes and it’s over. It could be argued that this ending points the possibility that there is no transcendence and all that is beyond our humanity is a regression back into our lizard brains. Possibly this interpretation is profound, but it’s not very satisfying destination after this fantastic voyage.
Emerging From the Psychedelic Labyrinth
Beyond the Black Rainbow is fantastic. It feels fresh even though it is steeped in retro film making concepts and techniques. That being said, this movie IS NOT for everyone. In fact, there is a large portion of the Horror population that won’t get it. Even those that do get it might feel betrayed by the conclusion. Still, there is enough artisanship here far serious fans of cinema to find something interesting. Minimally, most audiences will recognize the art, even if they wouldn’t hang it on their wall.
Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010) — A Hypnotic Descent Into Psychedelic Cosmic Horror - Malevolentdark
Director: Panos Cosmatos
Date Created: 1970-01-01 00:33
4