Written and directed by Darcy Weir, Jaime Maussan a famous Mexican journalist once again returns to Beyond The Spectrum to tell the whole story about some incredible cases of possible E.T visitations caught on camera throughout history.
Picking up where the first film left off, Humanoids explores many more tales of extra-terrestrial sightings with video footage and candid pictures. One of the main improvements to this film from its predecessor is its focus, whereas the previous instalment spent a large chunk of its time discussing Maussan’s career and history, here it jumps around the world showcasing various different stories and people. It’s nice to see such a varied bunch of witnesses from different countries, backgrounds and beliefs, it breaks up the stories and stops them from feeling too repetitive as there are a fair few details that are quite similar. That said, the actual accounts themselves are quite different from one another, different degrees of contact whether it be within a few inches to being accidentally captured across a field in the background of a video. Altogether that switch to solely consisting of sightings and discussing their nature and possible interpretations is a much stronger format.
The actual evidential visuals are mostly what you’d expect, grainy and blurry as most candid content was in the earlier days of home-video but there are a few surprising additions to the mix, some almost feeling graphic and others involving a frightening number of snakes. However, there’s also a huge use of drawings throughout, frequently cutting from the actual video content to interpretations which does chop away at its convincing side, cutting things too close to the cartoonish representation you see of UFO’s in mass media. It’s likely viewers will be more convinced by some accounts than others but of course this depends on where you land on the subject, whether you’re a cynic or a believer but there is a decent amount of interesting information regardless. It’s a shame however that the accounts are all rather dated, it would have pushed the film further to have more modern inclusions, although it does open the debate of how much you could trust more recent inclusions with the advancement of CGI.
One of the main stumbling blocks for the film is the narration, it lacks any real personality or charisma to keep you invested, the various voices used are quite monotone and are too reliant on pointing out the obvious repeatedly. This extends to Maussan’s involvement, it’s not consistent enough for him to feel the real lead or anchor to the film, it feels more like added context and opinion rather than a guide through the accounts. He also has a similar problem with a very low, slow cadence to his voice, however it has to be taken into account that he isn’t speaking his first language so a fair amount of energy and charisma is lost in the process of having to translate yourself while speaking. The problem extends through the accounts given by eye-witnesses as the same very typical announcer voice is dubbed over them rather than using subtitles, granted a lot of viewers sadly aren’t open-minded in that regard, as well as some of the video being taken from news reports that were already dubbed so a portion of it was simply unavoidable.
Beyond the Spectrum – Humanoids opens an interesting discussion about extra-terrestrial sightings and includes several fascinating accounts that potentially aren’t as black and white as you’d expect. There are still some issues with pacing and tone, it could really use an injection of energy to kick start the fascination and invigorate a passion for the subject but it’s an improvement on its predecessor, having a stronger focus on UFO’s and exploring some very curious events that may just stick in the back of your mind as to what they really were, but you’ll truly never know.
FilmCarnage.com 