It’s always a treat when a movie comes out and is able to feel as if it came out thirty years ago. Don’t look at that as an insult either, it’s really a huge compliment towards the momentous success of the style of a film. If it was the movies purpose to feel like it came straight out of the 1970s and, lo and behold, it feels like it came out of the 1970s then that’s worthy of all praise. A recent example just off the top of my head is the film Black Dynamite. If you haven’t seen it, you should go check it out now. It’s a hilarious comedy mocking the Blaxploitation movies from the days gone of Hollywood.
Of course, Black Dynamite isn’t the movie I want to hype for this week’s Stuck Up Cinema, instead I want to focus on a movie coming out this year (it’s already out in theatres in the States) called Beyond the Black Rainbow. Before we get any further into this, here’s the trailer. Watch it and we’ll be caught up.
When I first saw that trailer I nearly died. The movie was just speaking to me in ways that a trailer hasn’t spoken to me forages. It sat me down, looked me deep in the eyes and whispered to me ‘I am going to obliterate every single one of your senses.’ The music, the visuals, the atmosphere, just the… whole thing. Hold on a second, I’m going to watch it again right now.
You can’t gather much from the trailer, however I believe it’s about a young girl trying to escape an institute that she is trapped in. I assume that we’ll be following her journey throughout the Arboria Institute and it’ll be a supreme and destructive trip through a surreal visual nightmare. The nightmare itself won’t be the cliche nightmare of being faced with disturbing monsters or personalities, but rather the nightmare of knowing you’re just trapped– you’re stuck. The nightmare of attempting to climb up a set of stairs to only find it never ends, and the way down is just darkness.
This movie feels like it belongs in the 1980s, it has a distinct Cronenberg vibe and as you should know, I love that. The music, the look of the actors and the look of the world of the film itself. The director, whose name itself sounds like a 1980s movie, Panos Cosmatos grew up with these kinds of movies and you can tell that he was itching to make one of his own. Another reason this movie should be directly supported is because it’s Canadian and was shot in Vancouver. There is always the risk in a movie like this to just be god awful, but the fact that a group of Canadian filmmakers made a movie like this needs support and respect. A movie rooted in surrealism is a risk to make, and, in film especially, great risk usually deserves a great reward.
Of course a movie like this is just begging for failure, that becomes inherent in the type of film it is. Beyond the Black Rainbow could be extremely alienating to a viewer; nobody wants to see a movie that rubs in the audience’s face just how pretentious it is. This is the kind of movie that I wouldn’t blame someone for turning off halfway through. Obviously I’m not hoping for Beyond the Black Rainbow to be a confusing pile of crap, but I can respect the concern I have of it being convoluted as all hell. I know, no matter what, I’m going to buy this movie on Bluray when it comes out just to support Cosmatos and the companies that came together to make a movie like this. If it’s terrible? I’ll always have the trailer.
A random tangent. There is a song in the trailer, it sounds almost like an unholy choir singing together. I had a dream where I was in an derelict hospital with a group of friends trying to survive a demonic invasion. Anyways, the hospital started to get invaded and all of the humans corrupted by demons were climbing the stairs to the top floor we were camped out on. As the demons got closer that choir-like song got louder and louder until it surrounded me. It was one of the scariest dreams I’ve had in a long, long time. I just wanted to share that with you to further show just how much I’m involved in this movie. I’m hopeful it’s a success, I want it to be, I want to show it to all my friends and say ‘this is what filmmaking is!’
The Ubiquitous Gentlemen 