Before

Billy Crystal’s lead performance in Before is what is the big attraction to the series, but we also hope that the episodes’ relatively-short runtimes will keep the storytelling focused on Eli finding out why Noah knows about his past.

A mystery that begins intriguingly before drowning under the weight of its myriad out-there elements, the series takes little advantage of its star.

It moves slowly until the accelerating endgame, urged forward by a ticking clock. There is also more than a bit of repetition — scenes played in different settings, with different energies, props and clues, but making more or less the same point, even as the series lopes bit by bit toward a conclusion.

Scene to scene, the writing is often gripping, and it's not hard to understand and empathise with Eli – even when his actions get more and more questionable. But, ultimately, the series falls short at the final hurdle, relying too much on its character dynamics and not enough on taking the time to wrap up the show with a satisfying ending.

While bigger supernatural mysteries are seemingly suggested by the boy's terrified experiences, it ends up closer in experience to muted, mournful Gothic tales of personal woe, creating an ending that's all sound and Noah's fury, signifying... not quite nothing, but far short of an impactful something.

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.

Although the 10 episodes of “Before” are 30 minutes each, they’re still afflicted with the repetitious bloat common to so many streaming-era series. What’s nice for Crystal is this gives him ample time and opportunity to act out all kinds of behaviors he hasn’t before.

A fully-committed Crystal vibes with Rosie Perez as Noah’s guardian, Denise. However, laden with a buffet of red-herrings, “Before” stalls in the second half. The series requires an epic leap of faith to give credence to the supernatural elements, but the uneven pacing, detours, and repetitions over 10 episodes (eight would have been better) challenges skeptical viewers to suspend disbelief.

Crystal turns in a solid, intense, straight dramatic performance as a singularly focused, borderline narcissistic and not particularly likable character who is in more immediate need of therapy than most of his patients. Unfortunately, his character is mired in a great-looking but glacially paced and gimmick-riddled ghost story that might have worked as a feature film but grates like Freddy Krueger’s nails sliding down a chalkboard over the course of 10 episodes.

Before slowly drowns under the weight of its own pretensions.