Before Review: Billy Crystal Leads an Atmospheric but Flimsy Supernatural Drama

"People will cling to any half-assed theory about a spiritual world in order to avoid facing the truth," Eli (Billy Crystal), a New York child psychiatrist, tells his more open-minded academic friend Jackson (Robert Townsend). "There's never been a shred of scientific evidence that there's life after death. Once people are gone, they're gone." Eli's insistence will quickly be revealed as a case of someone protesting too much. But if when people are gone, they're gone, why does Eli keep seeing visions of his wife, Lynn (Judith Light), who recently took her own life after a long battle with cancer?

That's just one of the ways the supernatural begins to intrude on Eli's life in Before, a new limited series created by Sarah Thorp (a writer and producer whose past credits include Damien and Hawthorne). Despite plans to hang it up professionally, Eli finds himself drawn into a troubling new case before the episode ends. His work begins before he even realizes it. After hearing the sound of scratching at his front door, he discovers a haunted-looking boy he'll later learn is named Noah (Jacobi Jupe), who's bloodied his knuckles trying to scratch his way into Eli's apartment. Later that night, Noah will succeed in breaking in, then lead Eli back to the apartment he shares with his foster mother, Denise (Rosie Perez), who, understandably, mistakes Eli for an intruder and maces him. (This won't be the last time Eli behaves in a way that makes others doubt his intentions or his sanity.) The next day, Eli gets called in to deal with an especially tricky case: Noah's.

So what's going on with Eli? And what's going on with Noah? In time it will start to look like one question can't be answered without addressing the other. Noah begins acting out in disturbing, violent ways. Meanwhile, Eli's visions grow stranger and more upsetting, as does his own behavior. Beyond Lynn's unpredictable spectral returns, he keeps flashing on a violent moment at a swimming pool, hearing the sound of dripping water in the bathroom where Lynn died, and returning to an illustration Lynn made for a never-finished children's book and a photograph of a small farmhouse in the country. As the 10-episode series progresses, the connections between Eli and Noah start to mount (and mount and mount) as both start to appear beyond help. 

5.9

Before

at Apple TV+

Like

• The atmosphere
• The cast

Dislike

• The thin story and circular narrative

Heavy on atmosphere if not logic, Before attempts to stretch a story that might be better suited for a feature-length film (or an X-Files episode) to miniseries length without breaking it. It succeeds without ever excelling. The half-hour episodes help with the pacing, but not the repetitiveness. Each episode introduces a few new clues while withholding any significant revelations until the finale. When Eli, in a late-season episode, tears up a drawing and then tries to piece it back together, it echoes the experience of watching the show.

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Before is never less than watchable but never more than mildly gripping, though the cast helps keep it involving. Crystal is a counterintuitive choice to anchor a supernatural drama, but that often works in the series' favor. His comic instincts both help lighten the mood at times and throw viewers off balance by creating a false sense of safety and familiarity. Perez is, as ever, a welcome presence (though often not given enough to do), and the supporting cast and guest stars include everyone from Hope Davis to Itzhak Perlman. (It's not Perlman's acting debut, but it's the first time he hasn't played himself.) 

The gravity they bring to Before helps offset a creeping sense that they're working in service of a silly story, but only up to a point. Any series featuring psychic connections, ghosts, and other supernatural elements better left unspoiled gets a lot of license to be implausible, but some of Before's developments strain credulity even with the boundaries of the world it creates. Eventually those around Eli begin questioning his sanity, but it takes them a long time to grow seriously concerned. By this point, some of the elements that help keep the series grounded, like Jackson and other supporting characters who at first appeared likely to play significant roles in the story, have largely fallen away.

That leaves Crystal mostly carrying Before on his shoulders. It's a heavy burden for any actor, and Crystal's not helped by the series' reluctance to develop Noah as a character. (It's hard not to recall The Sixth Sense and the richness of its central relationship.) And when later episodes dealing with the full extent of Eli's trauma ask Crystal to give Eli an emotional complexity, it becomes clear how little the series has spent time with its protagonist's inner life amid all the spooky moments and twists. They're effective enough, but for a series that takes the unseen world, the one Eli professes not to believe exists, as its subject, Before's pleasures exist almost entirely on the surface.

Premieres: Friday, Oct. 25 on Apple TV+
Who's in it: Billy Crystal, Rosie Perez
Who's behind it: Sarah Thorp
For fans of: Supernatural dramas of the M. Night Shyamalan variety
How many episodes we watched: 10 of 10