Does the title Beyond the Night evoke anything to you? Because it seems like one of the most generic names for a film since, oh, I don’t know? Heat? Jaws? Perhaps The Quantum of Solace wins this particular bracket. The point is, behind this indie thriller that harbors some interesting ideas, it is ultimately its nondescriptness that is its undoing. Jason Noto has fashioned a noir tale of wrongdoing in a small, coal-mining town in upstate New York with a threaded, workmanlike approach, but the strands never seem to cohere to a collective whole, despite its cast’s best intentions.
Ray Marrow (Holtz) is a soldier returning to his hometown to bury his wife, Maisie (Mehner), after she was killed in a car crash. Surviving that trauma is his son, Lawrence (Robertson), a young boy with a prominent facial birthmark who knows more than he ever could about the disappearance of a teenage girl gone missing some time ago. The film teases out but never actually confirms this supernatural element, that perhaps the girl has been reincarnated into the young boy, and she is wailing with vengeance beyond the grave. So it follows that Ray must navigate the funerals, the wakes, and the ensuing plot contrivances regarding his deputy sheriff sister Caroline (Blanchard) and the resident gangster Bernie (Kelly), and what appears to be a food stamp scam plot point that goes nowhere. All this mixes into a stew that seems like it may congeal; but when you add the factor of a sketchy Pastor Hirsch (Huff), the narrative ends up taking on more than it can chew.
The best ingredient is the way Ray relates to his son. Those moments – sometimes quiet, but often volatile – lift the film up from being a turgid episode of Fargo or Justified. The father and son trying to negotiate the world of this small town after a tragedy is compelling and poignant. Holtz veers into the stoic and grieving ex-soldier who’s trying to do right by his son, but the third act devolves into a trite and luridly blood-soaked affair. The elements at play here are too melodramatic and never lift the film beyond the cogs of its boilerplate parts. It is clear that director Noto has the chops, he just needs to cut away the fat and go straight to the bone.
This article appears in January 25 • 2019.