‘Beyond the Night’ review — An engrossing supernatural mystery thriller

Beyond the Night is an engrossing thriller filled with strong characters and an intruging central mystery that keeps you guessing.

Beyond the Night is a dark slow-burning supernatural thriller set in a small coal-mining town in rural Pennsylvania. It’s the perfect setting for the movie’s mystery to be set against. The gray, frozen landscape adds to the tense atmosphere as does the fact that seemingly everyone and their grandma owns a gun — this is an important note.

A lot of the movie reminded me of Jeff Nichols’ Midnight Special — down to the 80s-soaked synth score and the story of a father doing everything in his power to protect his son who is displaying supernatural abilities.

However, the movie is more grounded than it sounds. Ray (Zane Holtz — quite good here) is an army man who returns to Philadelphia after his wife is killed in a car accident leaving him to take care of their son Lawrence (Azhy Robertson) — who is marked with a port-wine stain over the left side of his face.

Ray isn’t equipped to take care of Lawrence. Granted, Lawrence has his behavioral quirks to go along with his birthmark — he often sings random notes to himself and lashes out at precisely the wrong moments.

Ray often losses his patients with Lawrence and becomes frustrated with him. However, he has his moments as a father. At one point, a woman in a store sees Lawrence and says to her daughter, “don’t look at it, baby girl.” Like any parent, Ray takes a tire iron to their windshield. Not exactly parent of the year material, but Lawrence certainly appreciates it.

The father and son move to Ray’s hometown in rural Pennsylvania where they both deal with their grief with the support of Ray’s sister and town deputy Caroline (The Invitation’s Tammy Blanchard — fantastic as always).

To complicate matters, Lawrence begins to exhibit even stranger behavior than usual — staring at random people and things — and eventually causes a stir when he mentions the name July Rain to a woman at his mother’s funeral reception, which causes the woman to storm out.

Ray learns that July is a 15-year-old girl who went missing years prior and whose case — despite Caroline’s and Sheriff Hirsch’s (Skipp Sudduth) best efforts. He is convinced that his son must have heard the name from someone else. But then, Lawrence begins to recite information he should not know. Confused and fearful — July’s father was local redneck thug Bernie (Chance Kelly) — Ray and Caroline team up with child psychologist Dr. Sheryl Bomont (Enid Graham) to unravel the mystery.

Director and writer Jason Noto drew inspiration from Denis Villeneuve’s (Arrival) films Prisoners and Enemy. And that is obvious. Beyond the Night is a slow unraveling mystery that gives you the pieces to solve it throughout. And while it’s not as smart as those films — I found that the movie gives you too much — it’s a wholly effective and well-directed thriller.

A lot of that comes from the well-drawn characters — particularly the supporting cast. Blanchard’s Caroline is torn between duty to her brother and duty to her job, which leads to an interesting internal conflict.

Neal Huff portrays the town’s pastor whose storyline deals with faith and all the complexities that come with it. Not to mention Chance Kelly’s menacing performance as a local gangster who is terrifying, but given moments of humanity specifically around his daughter.

I think there are some mistakes as can be expected from a debut. The plot doesn’t always flow well and sometimes some information is unclear. But the style is there. Noto gets his point across well enough. If anything, I wish the lean 98-minute running-time was expanded so we could explore the characters and story more.

Beyond the Night’s greatest virtue is its characters. And the father-son relationship at its core is a major driver of that. Ray’s growth as a father throughout is the main propulsive point of the film. While the mystery is what makes the movie interesting, that relationship is what makes it engrossing.

Beyond the Night is now playing in limited release.