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Beyond the Black Rainbow is a 2010 Canadian science fiction horror film written and directed by Panos Cosmatos in his feature film debut. It stars Michael Rogers and Eva Allan. Beyond the Black Rainbow was distributed by Mongrel Media in Canada, and by Magnet Releasing, a sub-division of Magnolia Pictures, in the United States. Produced and filmed in Vancouver, the film premiered at the 2010 Whistler Film Festival, in Whistler, British Columbia. Through 2011, it was also screened at several film festivals across North America, including Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas and Fantasia Festival in Montreal. Plot In the 1960s, Mercurio Arboria founded the Arboria Institute, a research facility dedicated to reconciling science and spirituality, allowing humans to move into a New Age of "Serenity Through Technology" and perpetual happiness. In 1983, Dr. Barry Nyle, Arboria's protégé, runs the Institute. His main subject is Elena. Held within the institute's lower levels, Elena communicates through telepathy and demonstrates psychic abilities, which Nyle suppresses with a glowing prismatic device. During the day, Nyle subjects Elena to "therapy" sessions, during which Elena begs to see her father, but Nyle repeatedly rejects her. At night, while Elena uses her psychic abilities to surreptitiously watch television shows through a video monitor on the wall of her cell, Nyle returns home to his wife Rosemary, who seems permanently in a marijuana-induced stupor. Nyle himself takes significant quantities of prescription medications. Attempting to elicit an emotional response from Elena, Nyle speaks about her dead mother. Following his hints, Elena finds her mother's photo under her bed. That evening, nurse Margo discovers Elena's case notes, containing strange symbols and images that indicate Nyle's violent sexual obsession with her. She puts the notes back, but the ash from her cigarette tips Nyle of her discovery. Nyle stages a confrontation between Margo and Elena, then deactivates the prism. Elena telekinetically kills Margo by causing her brain to burst through her eyes, thrilling Nyle. He briefly allows Elena to leave her cell before reactivating the prism, incapacitating her. He summons a "Sentionaut", encased in a red environment suit. The Sentionaut injects a tracking device into Elena's neck, returns her to the cell, and removes Margo's corpse. Nyle visits Arboria, who displays signs of senility and drug addiction. He murders Arboria, which Elena experiences via telepathic link. A flashback to 1963 reveals that Elena's mother Anna was Arboria's wife and colleague. Arboria submitted a young Nyle to a procedure meant to help him transcend. After being submerged in a vat of black liquid and experiencing otherworldly, hellish visions, Nyle emerged insane and killed Anna. Unperturbed, Arboria submits the infant Elena, his daughter, to the same procedure. Nyle returns home and removes his disguises, revealing a bald head and black irises. Declaring to Rosemary he is an evolved being from "Beyond the Black Rainbow," Nyle pushes his thumbs into her eye sockets, killing her. Meanwhile, Elena escapes her cell. Evading the prism's detection, Sentionauts, and unknown threats, Elena finds the way out and sees the night sky for the first time in her life. Nyle, wielding a ceremonial dagger he calls "The Devil's Tear-Drop," arrives at the institute to find Elena gone. While pursuing her through the wooded areas surrounding the institute, he kills a pair of "heshers." Nyle eventually confronts Elena in a clearing and repeatedly implores her to come to him. Elena uses her psychic abilities to trap Nyle's feet, causing him to fall, hit his head against a rock, and die instantly. Elena finds herself on a suburban street, guided by the light generated by a television set. A post-credits scene reveals a Sentionaut action figure, ostensibly in a child's bedroom. Cast Production Development As a child, Cosmatos frequented a video store named Video Attic. During these trips he would browse the horror film section looking at the boxes although he was not allowed to watch such films. During such times he would instead imagine what the film was. He would later reflect upon this experience when making Black Rainbow where one of his goals was "to create a film that is a sort of imagining of an old film that doesn't exist." The year 1983 was chosen for the story as it's the first year he went to Video Attic. Additionally he thought the idea of setting such a film one year before 1984 was funny. The film's genesis was an overlap between two projects Cosmatos wanted to do. One of these was a film about a girl trapped in an asylum while the other was an installation promoting a research facility that didn't exist. Eventually Cosmatos realized that he could use both ideas in the same project. The presence of his parents haunts "every frame of this film", said the Rome-born filmmaker. His father was film director George P. Cosmatos (whose credits include Rambo: First Blood Part II and Cobra), deceased in April 2005, and his mother Swedish sculptor Birgitta Ljungberg-Cosmatos, who died in July 1997 after a lengthy battle with cancer. Unable to deal with his mother's death, Panos "drifted into a slow motion mode of self-destruction and binge drinking." When elder Cosmatos died, the grief he felt compounded. After that the aspiring writer/director started therapy and decided he wanted to make a film as part of the healing process. Cosmatos felt that his "filmmaking sensibility is a weird hybrid of both of them" – his father's "popcorn movies" and his mother's haunting, experimental art. Casting Eva Allan, who plays the main female lead, found an acting agent right away after graduating from School Creative which led to her role on this film. Filming Beyond the Black Rainbow was financed by DVD residuals from Tombstone (1993), directed by Panos' father. The film was shot in three weeks using a modified Panavision 35 mm camera. This was suggested by cinematographer Norm Li, for he noted that Panos' references – mostly films from the '70s and '80s – "were all grainy, colorful, and full of texture", and he felt the 35 mm format was "the only way to shoot." Style and influences Visuals Beyond the Black Rainbow has been praised for its visual style. Cosmatos declared that his "modernist" use of color was influenced by Michael Mann's Manhunter (1986) and The Keep (1983). The blue hue cinematography – the "night mode" as Cosmatos dubbed it – was inspired by the freezer room scene in John Carpenter's Dark Star (1974). Norm Li cited other references: Daft Punk's Electroma (2006), Dario Argento's Suspiria (1977), and George Lucas' THX 1138 (1971). A number of reviewers noted similarities between the film and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and A Clockwork Orange (1971). "I love Stanley Kubrick, and have seen, and probably internalized, all of his work.... Discover the Infinite Ideas Mandy Francis popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Infinite Ideas Mandy Francis books.