Beyond The Black Rainbow Reviews

The rich and strange debut of Panos Cosmatos throbs with style and portent, which proves a winning combination even if it is somewhat light in the narrative department.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5

Audiences who appreciate oddball first efforts from talents such as Lynch (Eraserhead), Cronenberg (Shivers) and Jeunet (Delicatessen) will be thankful.

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If 2001: A Space Odyssey had an evil twin masquerading as a horror film, this would be it. Beyond the Black Rainbow culls from untold volumes of film history even as it delivers its own uniquely brilliant freak-outs.

| Original Score: 3.5/4

a twisted version of 2001: A Space Odyssey which takes place in a psychological torture chamber rather than in the whole of the universe

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

The product of a fevered mad auteur... May prove to be one of the more rewarding and disturbing film experiences in many a year.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10

The feature is extraordinary to watch, offering delirious visions that hypnotize and repulse, with distinct Cronenbergian encouragement that merges the magic of thought with the puzzle of flesh.

Full Review | Original Score: B

Imperfect, but gloriously so, creating, in its own way, a new, exciting, disorienting, unsettling, and long-overdue filmic language.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

A film that's shockingly disturbing at times but also quite beautiful in its artistry.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10

Beyond The Black Rainbow is more surface than substance, but those surfaces are gleamingly polished enough to make for a hypnotic experiment that goes beyond genre pastiche or art-school wankery to seem formally daring.

Full Review | Original Score: B+

A welcome attempt to bring back the days of El Topo and Eraserhead, when night owls embraced directors who wanted to screw with viewers' heads, not just the ones who screwed up their chances for auteristic posterity.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

Something like a trippy grindhouse homage whose familiar images are refracted through a prism of blacklight posters, Jodorowsky films, and even Rob Zombie's grungy psychotropic sensibility.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

A reverential ode to Kubrick, Argento, Cronenberg, Altered States, John Carpenter synth scores, '70s sci-fi and '80s fantasy, and mind-boggling, hyper-stylized madness.

Full Review | Original Score: A-

There's much to admire about Panos Cosmatos' directorial debut, but the end result is admittedly not for all tastes.

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If you follow the muddled spacy film's logic throughout, you deserve a merit honor badge for devotion to service beyond the call of duty.

Full Review | Original Score: C

Nothing much happens in this experimental-type science fiction horror film. What little does happen is at a slow-motion snail's pace.

Full Review | Original Score: D

The movie looks like it was lit by lava lamps, scored on Moog synthesizers, written between bong hits and acted underwater. None of this is meant as praise.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4

While never quite dull, 'Beyond the Black Rainbow' doesn't achieve all the chills it's capable of.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

'Beyond' would be more interesting with limitations.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

Comprehensibility does not appear to be one of this writer/director's goals, but if someone is able to help Cosmatos marshal his raw visual talent, I'll be first in line to see his second film.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

"Beyond the Black Rainbow" has a doomy, dreamy, druggy, draggy feel that's impressively sustained - until it becomes oppressive, then pointless, then laughable.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4