I typically don’t get annoyed by reboots or remakes of popular horror movies or derivative scary movies aimed at younger generations. Maybe I’ve seen it a million times, but this generation hasn’t. Plus, I sometimes find it interesting to see how each generation puts its spin on the same story.
There’s no excuse, however, for Before, a painfully dull, glacially paced horror series starring Billy Crystal, Rosie Perez, and Judith Light. The target audience here is older viewers, but there’s nothing they haven’t already seen countless times, not only in their lifetimes but even in recent years.
Billy Crystal plays Eli, a soon-to-be-retired therapist grieving the recent loss of his wife (Judith Light). Meanwhile, there’s a creepy kid, Noah, who lives with a foster parent (Rosie Perez). Noah is nonverbal (except for inexplicable moments when he speaks Dutch) and sees poorly rendered CGI visions of monsters that provoke violence. Noah mysteriously appears in Eli’s apartment one day and is, unsurprisingly, assigned to him as a patient the next. There’s a connection between Noah and Eli tied to Noah’s visions and Eli’s deceased wife, but it’s all painfully predictable.
Watching it is equally tedious. Although the episodes are only half an hour long, the pacing and moodiness stretch the runtime interminably. It’s filled with pointless dream sequences, and Billy Crystal — a beloved comedian! —speaks mostly in monotone. He’s never been more miscast, despite spending the better part of a decade as a romantic-comedy lead.
Before ultimately feels like yet another show Apple TV+ threw money at because it could, not because it should. I like Billy Crystal, too, but that’s hardly a reason to greenlight a dreary horror retread that would’ve been overly long as a movie but feels downright unbearable as a series.
