Within the first few moments of Beyond Existence, one thing is very clear:
We are definitely in good hands.
This may not be obvious unless you’ve watched a lot of Indie films: after all, the real challenge low budget filmmakers face is how to best use their limited resources.
So first time director, Schuman Hoque, with the help of a script by Christopher Butler and Steven Farah, starts the film with an incredible CGI sequence, as a mysterious pyramid forms itself and a man emerges from within.
It instantly sets the mood of the film, tells us that, yes, this is a science fiction film, and piques our interest enough to keep us intrigued as the story becomes something more mundane, a deliberately low-key road picture, with only hints of where it will end up going.
Now, I will point out that this stunning opening sequence isn’t the only effects sequence in the film — there are several scattered throughout — but none of them are quite as impressive or as long as this opening.
But it does the job far better than saving their money for a bigger finale would have. After all, despite its often trippy ideas, and a plot about what amounts to an alien invasion of Earth, Beyond Existence is primarily an intense two player drama, as two people talk while they drive across England together. Yes, there are other characters who show up, but it always comes back to the same two people, alone in the car together.
A mysterious Professor (Gary MacKay) leaves the secure facility where he works. While he isn’t officially a prisoner, he isn’t allowed out of the building, and a young woman (Amelia Clay) is sent to kill him.
However, she decides to keep him alive a bit longer when he tells her that he has the mysterious object known as the Hangko, which the government wants even more than they want him.
But before she can decide how to handle the situation, a mysterious assassin shows up and tries to kill both of them.
So they are forced to go on the run together, and the young security agent, Ellen, gradually learns the truth about the Professor and his true mission here on Earth…
There are in fact five other actors credited in the story (and a sixth, uncredited part which proves important at the end), but most of them only have a few scenes: a few of the Professor’s people help him along the way, while Ellen eventually seeks shelter from someone she once knew very well. Only the assassin pursuing them gets much screen time, and yet he has little dialogue and we learn very little about him beyond what he has come to do.
Instead, Beyond Existence gives us glimpses and hints of something huge and almost unthinkable: a vast plot which is almost reaching its conclusion, a terrible threat, and an even larger possibility which might just save us all.
And it does this almost entirely with the dialogue between its main characters.
There are a few other incidents along the way, but this is as much a story about two people and who they are as it is about aliens and the powerful MacGuffin which everyone is after.
Beyond Existence impressed me: it looks great, the effects are beautiful and well-designed and it found one truly bizarre location for an important scene (I have no idea what that building could have been, and it does appear to be a real location!). The two leads are both solid and Amelia Clay reminds me a lot of a young Tilda Swinton. While we don’t spend a lot of time on either The Professor or Ellen, we still get a clear glimpse of who they both are, one which emerges from their discussions and encounters along the way.
Not everyone will love this film: it takes its time and tells us its story in little pieces, scraps and glimpses. It may have a few outstanding effects which set the mood, but not many and they are used sparingly. This is not a movie which wants to stun or thrill you, but one which is about ideas and a far larger story than two people on the run.
And yes, there is a lot of talk.
But, if you can accept it for what it is, it is a strange and thoughtful little film which does a lot with very little, which creates a story on a cosmic scale of which we only get a tantalizing glimpse.
Yet it does all this with little more than a trip through the countryside.
And two people in a car talking…
rivets on the poster 