It was a joke that was announced: Billy Crystal in a horror series would make us laugh. To be honest, he doesn’t even manage that. Before is simply a dragged-out attempt to make us tense, but it fails. Everything is confusing, dragged out, and repetitive to the point of being just boring. And there are still EIGHT episodes left.

Eli Adler (Crystal), a child psychologist recovering from the death of his wife Lynn (Judith Light) after a long battle with cancer, ends up getting involved with the case of a mysterious child, Noah (Jacobi Jupe), who invades his home and his life. Noah is clearly a child surviving a trauma and when drawing a farmhouse, Eli realizes that it looks like a photograph that Lynn left behind and now wants to understand the connection.

So far, the series seems like a stylized mix of White Noise and The Sixth Sense, but without really being complex or compelling enough. The atmosphere is forcedly scary, taking away any strength or real curiosity in the ‘mystery’.

Crystal has undeniable charisma, even without exploring what she has best, which is her comedic side. This certainly causes strangeness, but her reaction to grief and professional skepticism rings true. And Jupe clearly does well in a first leading role.

The combination of a psychologist and a tormented boy worked before, but at least the story seemed to make sense. Here we don’t understand what happened to Lynn or the house or Noah. Will it become a comedy?

Pesquisar

Pesquisar