Rented a new direct-to-streaming sci-fi flick called The Beyond on iTunes. Premise is a wormhole mysteriously opens in Earth’s orbit and the “space agency” wants to send a human through to see what there is to see. It’s a relatively low budget but well-intentioned film that is kind of drag. It’s also tangentially more about brain transplants than it is space exploration.
The movie is filmed as a faux-documentary about the portal and the efforts to explore it. It’s kind of an interesting take except it quickly becomes apparent that its covering for its budget. It’s also an emblematic example of show-don’t-tell. Major events are explained to the audience by talking head interviews… like how a documentary might do it but not a narrative film. It was hard to get into it when I’m just being lectured to instead of seeing the events described.
On the positive side, I respect the film’s ambition. It’s got an idea and it wants to a positive film about human achievement and science used for the good of mankind. This is the kind of film I want to be made in between alien invasion flicks or science-gone-wrong stories. Those are fine, but more positive, forward-thinking films are welcome.
So, yeah, it’s an interesting story poorly told. If they had a bigger budget and didn’t focus so much on the fake documentary, this maybe could have been a good film. But it’s not and that’s unfortunate. I guess if you are curious, there are easily worse films.
Score: 66