20150619: Drama Review--Beyond

Beyond

image courtesy of The Movie Database

1. Fundamentals.
1. Title: Beyond
2. IMDb: Users rated this 3.8/10 (471 votes)
3. Rotten Tomatoes:
   zero critics responded with ratings
   29% of viewers like it based on 103 ratings
   Critics Consensus: None yet.


4. Status: Released
5. Release date: 2014-04-25
6. Production Companies: Attercorp Productions, Bigview Media
7. Tagline: Survival is a Choice.


8. Budget:  Budget estimate not available at review time.
9. Revenue: Revenue figures not available at review time.
10. Runtime: 89 minutes.
11. Genres: Drama, Science Fiction, Romance


12. Written and directed by: Joseph Baker, Tom Large


13. Starring: Richard J. Danum as Cole, Gillian McGregor as Maya, Paul Brannigan as Michael, Kristian Hart as Keith Novac, Sid Phoenix as Prof. Rawlston Jennings, John Schwab as National Space Agency Spokesperson, George Dillon as Newsreader


14. TMDb overview: A suspenseful sci-fi journey tracking the turbulent relationship of Cole and Maya as they struggle to survive in a world where the human population has been left decimated after an extra-terrestrial attack.


2. Setup and Plot


1. What is believed to be an asteroid approaches Earth.  There is a bit of imprecision.  The experts cannot decide whether it will impact our planet even when it is visible in the night sky.  As the object gets closer, other possibilities show themselves.


2. The scene jumps back and forth from before the arrival, when the couple met, to the present, after the encounter, when most humans are dead.  The dialectic is awkward in execution and definitely off-putting.


3. As the film rolls on, will we ever see the encounter?  Will we ever see the end of the couple's complaining about each other?  Will anyone survive this situation?


3. Conclusions
1. This is psychological drama, not science fiction.  All of the narrative is false, if one is to believe the ending.
2. One line summary: I would not recommend this to a friend.
3. Three of ten


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 5/10 Dark and gritty, to no particular point; a bit too much shaky cam.


2. Sound: 5/10 I can hear the dialog.  The reason for some of the musical interludes escapes me.


3. Acting: 4/10 For the majority of the film there are only two actors.  The pair seem listless and irritable, not under siege or in threat of their lives, not even hungry and dirty.


4. Screenplay: 2/10 The dialog is mostly boring, including the many tiffs; after hearing 'we need to talk' the first three times, the next dozen are irritating.  There are too many back and forth jumps in the timeline.  These two factors undermine any interest I had in the original concept.  In the post encounter/eradication era, there is not as much evidence of genocide as I would have expected.  Eliminating billions of humans would leave some traces, but many of the scenes are devoid of any signs of previous habitation.  The ending more or less throws away the rest of the film.  Another way of putting it is that the rest of the film provides next to no foundation for the ending.