49
Metascore
10 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 88Slant MagazineSimon AbramsSlant MagazineSimon AbramsSomething 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.
- 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.
- 80Time OutTime OutThough the finale feels a bit anticlimactic, the lysergic atmosphere, synth-heavy score and logic-resistant story line more than earn Beyond the Black Rainbow's concluding quote, borrowed from another classic midnight movie: "No matter where you go…there you are." See the late show.
- 80Village VoiceVillage VoiceAt heart, the film is no more (or less) than a brilliantly executed lark, but it's not often that we're reminded with such potency that movies are most delightful as sensory experiences.
- 50The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisThe New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisUnless you're among those who still drop acid as a midnight-movie apéritif, your enjoyment of this retro oddity remains far from guaranteed.
- 50Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenAustin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenAs filmmaking debuts go, Panos Cosmatos' Beyond the Black Rainbow is as striking as it is nuts.
- Beyond the Black Rainbow is the kind of movie whose cool-looking trailer entices you to midnight screenings, but the film will bore you so profoundly you'll fall asleep halfway and wake up disoriented during the closing credits.
- 38Boston GlobeMark FeeneyBoston GlobeMark FeeneyBeyond the Black Rainbow has a doomy, dreamy, druggy, draggy feel that's impressively sustained - until it becomes oppressive, then pointless, then laughable.
- 20New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierNew York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierAdd two more stars here if zoning out to weirdo-dreamy, '80s public-access TV with a synthesizer soundtrack is your idea of midnight fun. Because this ambitious, but not uninteresting, failure has that in its DNA.
- 12New York PostLou LumenickNew York PostLou LumenickHis late father directed "Rambo: First Blood,'' but Panos Cosmatos' debut feature couldn't be more different - this would-be cult classic is the movie equivalent of gazing at a lava lamp for nearly two hours.