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Synopsis for A Black Rift Begins to Yawn:
Through a mysterious circumstance, two former classmates come into possession of their deceased professor’s set of cassette tapes, which possibly contain recordings of strange signals from beyond the stars. As the women dig into the recordings, they begin to feel memories, the chronology of time, and their identities slip into obscurity.
Reading the synopsis of A Black Rift Begins to Yawn before viewing, I was intrigued. There is a distinctly Lovecraftian element in the description, and as a fan of cosmic horror, I desperately wanted to check it out.
In a change of pace from your usual Lovecraft-related film, A Black Rift Begins to Yawn plays out in a non-linear fashion with intentionally slow and methodical pacing. Scenes are often long with little being said and take place out of order, making viewing a possible struggle for the audience. I wouldn’t go as far as saying the plot is convoluted to the point of it being hard to follow, but it does feel needlessly complicated. The majority of the film’s time is in cycles of extended scenic shot, a little bit of dialogue, then synth music and surreal colors until a fade into the next scenic shot. We don’t get much of a chance to connect with the characters. I understand the intent of the non-linear elements, but unlike similar cosmic horror films, like last year’s The Color Out of Space (2019 – read our review here), we aren’t given any major connective tissue or a concrete cause and effect of before/after the effect of the eldritch, forbidden SOMETHING.
This is not to say the film is entirely without merit, though. It has an experimental lighting and color grading style, comparable to what Twitter is frequently calling bisexual lightning, that of Wong Kar Wai, with a vivid, bright palette, focusing primarily on hues of pink, purple, and light blue. Added to that, the visuals are grainy and have blown out lighting, adding an ethereal sense to the film and making it hard to ground any scene to a distinct point in the timeline.
Overall, I can’t say I personally was a fan of A Black Rift Begins to Yawn, but I feel like Director Matthew Wade, with more experience under his belt, could bring a lot of positive attention back to the cosmic horror genre with future projects.
