Beyond the black rainbow

In the 1960s, scholar Mercurio Arboria founded the Institute of Arboria, a New Age- style research center dedicated to finding reconciliation between science and religion, allowing people to transition into an era of eternal happiness. In 1983, his protégé, Barry Niall, became the head of the Institute. Outwardly charming and an excellent scientist, Barry suffers from a mental disorder and keeps the girl Elena at the Institute. She demonstrates some parapsychological abilities that Niall suppresses using a large luminous device in the shape of a prism .

In an attempt to understand what abilities Elena has, Dr. Niall conducts a daily therapy session with her, which takes the form of interrogations, during which Elena, communicating with the doctor through telepathy , demands to see her father. At night, Elena is kept in a brightly lit, completely white room with a TV . Niall spends nights at home, where he lives with his wife Rosemary, an obedient, timid woman who is as if in a state of constant numbness .

Trying to provoke an emotional response from Elena, Niall tells her about her dead mother, whom she calls “beautiful” and “desired”. He then hints that the photograph of her mother may be in her room. Later, the girl discovers a photo under the bed. In the evening of the same day, nurse Margot, working with Elena, accidentally discovers Niall's notes on Elena, which contain images of female genital organs . Margot realizes that Niall is sexually obsessed with her experimental subject and returns the notes to their place. Barry finds out about this, as he finds ashes from a nurse’s cigarette next to his notes.

The next day, Barry sends Margot to check Elena’s room, because according to him, the girl is hiding something forbidden. The nurse finds the photo and destroys it, for which Elena, using telekinesis, kills her. The events are being watched by the joyful and intrigued Barry Niall. He allows her to leave the camera, but when she goes into the Institute’s corridor, she activates a prism device and the girl begins to convulse and falls to the floor. Then Niall clicks on the big yellow button. A cloud of smoke forms above the prism, after which a certain figure in a red suit appears, designated in the film as Sentionaut ( English Sentionaut ). He gives Elena a syringe injection and leaves. The girl is again in her room.

Barry visits Mercury Arborius, who is in a room on one of the floors of the Institute and apparently does not know what his protege is doing, or is indifferent to him. The doctor is now a feeble old man who is sitting in front of the screen and watching videos of nature on him, saying that this helps him “remember the carefree time”. Then the action is transferred to 1966, where it is shown how Barry Niall participates in the Mercurio experiment, the purpose of which is to comprehend transcendence . Barry's body is immersed in a vat with dark liquid, he observes terrible visions, which makes him crazy. He attacks the woman who observed the experiment and kills her. At the same time, the completely unflappable doctor Arboria immerses the infant in the black liquid. It soon turns out that this child was Elena, and the deceased woman was her mother and wife Mercury.

The action returns to the present. Dr. Arboria asks Barry to inject him with pain medication and asks how Elena is doing. Barry replies that she is fine, and then makes an injection, turns on a Hawaiian Islands movie on a VHS tape and leaves. After some time, Dr. Arboria dies from an overdose of drugs. This is followed by a scene in Barry's house: it turns out that he masks the lack of hair and eye color with a wig and special contact lenses. Barry shows himself to his wife in his true guise, which she is not surprised at, because she knows what he looks like. He tells Rosemary that he has been to another world, where he met the Eye of God. Barry compares the beauty of this world with a black rainbow and says that the Eye has chosen it. Niall crushes his wife's head and drives to the Institute.

Meanwhile, Elena decides to escape. On her way, she encounters "mutants", like zombie creatures, who were also objects of research by scientists of the Institute and the lone Sentionaut. Instead of capturing the girl, he removes a mask in front of her, under which a distorted children's face appears. In the end, Elena manages to get out into the wild.

Niall discovers the girl’s loss and sets off in search of her. He takes with him a dagger, which he calls the “ Devil's Tear ” ( The Devil's Tear-Drop ). He finds himself in a clearing in the woods, where two guys drink beer, smoke marijuana and listen to the metal . A skinny guy with glasses walks away to help, suddenly appeared Niall kills him with a dagger in the throat. Then Barry sneaks up to the fat guy sitting by the fire, and puts a dagger to his neck. He insists that the fat man raped Elena and then sticks the blade into his mouth.

Barry finds Elena in the field. He tells her how beautiful she looks when she sleeps, and asks to go with him. Elena telekinesis stops Barry, who is trying to approach her, and he falls and mortally hits his head on a stone. Elena goes towards a small town where in one of the houses the light of the TV is visible. In the scene after the credits, the camera focuses on the action figure of Sentionaut, who, saying the words in the reverse order, says the phrase “I lost visual contact. You are reading? Repeat, are you reading? ”( I’ve lost visual contact. Do you read? Repeat, do you read? ).

The musical accompaniment for the film was written by Jeremy Schmidt, keyboardist of the psychedelic rock band Black Mountain , who at that time was engaged in his solo project Sinoia Caves ^[4] . According to Schmidt, the soundtrack of the Black Rainbow was influenced by the music from the films Radiance (1980) and Risky Business (1983) ^[5] .

In the final credits, the song “Anonymous” is a synth-pop SSQ band.

• Official movie website
• Beyond the Black Rainbow on the Internet Movie Database
• “Beyond the Black Rainbow” on the Rotten Tomatoes website