Held within the institute's lower levels, Elena communicates through telepathy and demonstrates psychic abilities, which Nyle suppresses with a glowing prismatic device.

At night, while Elena uses her psychic abilities to surreptitiously watch television shows through a video monitor on the wall of her cell, Nyle returns home to his wife Rosemary, who seems permanently in a marijuana-induced stupor.

[7] That evening, nurse Margo discovers Elena's case notes, containing strange symbols and images that indicate Nyle's violent sexual obsession with her.

[10] His father was film director George P. Cosmatos (whose credits include Rambo: First Blood Part II and Cobra), deceased in April 2005,[11] and his mother Swedish sculptor Birgitta Ljungberg-Cosmatos,[9] who died in July 1997 after a lengthy battle with cancer.

[4] Eva Allan, who plays the main female lead, found an acting agent right away after graduating from School Creative which led to her role on this film.

[4] This was suggested by cinematographer Norm Li, for he noted that Panos' references – mostly films from the '70s and '80s – "were all grainy, colorful, and full of texture", and he felt the 35 mm format was "the only way to shoot.

[17] The blue hue cinematography – the "night mode" as Cosmatos dubbed it – was inspired by the freezer room scene in John Carpenter's Dark Star (1974).

[19] Critics have also compared Beyond the Black Rainbow to Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972),[20][21][22] Ken Russell's Altered States (1980),[23][24] and Gaspar Noé's Enter the Void (2010).

The young Barry Nyle's acid trip in that segment of Beyond the Black Rainbow was inspired by the "Battle of the Gods" sequence in Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt (1963).

[25] Cosmatos mentioned Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad (1961) and Saul Bass's Phase IV (1974) as cinematographic blueprints for his debut film.

[27]Jeremy Schmidt, keyboard player for Vancouver-based rockers Black Mountain, was invited by Cosmatos to compose the film's soundtrack.

A mutual appreciation for Tangerine Dream, John Carpenter soundtracks and Giorgio Moroder's music for Midnight Express (1978) and American Gigolo (1980) cemented their bond.

[15] Ligeti pieces "Lux Aeterna" and "Atmosphères" had been featured in 2001: A Space Odyssey,[31] and Penderecki's "Polymorphia" and a portion of "The Devils of Loudun" was used in The Exorcist (1973).

[32] For his analogue synthesizer score, Schmidt used the following equipment: a Prophet 5, two Oberheims, Moog Taurus bass pedals, a Korg CX-3 organ and a Mellotron.

[33] An extensive use of the Mellotron can be heard on the flashback sequence, where Cosmatos had been using Pink Floyd's "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" as a temp track.

[34] Cosmatos partly picked up these themes by reading the science fiction works of Beat novelist William S. Burroughs, books by and large dealing with societal control.

[40] Similar to many Lovecraftian protagonists, Barry Nyle is ultimately a pathetic character: his far-reaching knowledge, restrained demeanor and carefully controlled work environment are unable to dominate the forces of irrationality and chaos burning in his mind.

For him, the Boomers' search for alternative belief systems made them dabble in the dark side of occultism, which in turn corrupted their quest for spiritual enlightenment.

[17] The use of psychedelic drugs for mind-expansion purposes is also explored,[42] although Cosmatos' take on it is "dark and disturbing", a "brand of psychedelia that stands in direct opposition to the flower child, magic mushroom peace trip" wrote a reviewer.

[43] UGO Networks's Jordan Hoffman noted both elements, stating in his review that in the movie some "up-to-no-good new age scientists have let their experiments with consciousness-altering drugs mutate a young woman"[24] – in this case, Elena.

[44]German film critic Hauke Lehmann,[45] C. H. Newell writing at Father Son Holy Gore,[46] and Mike Lesuer of Flood Magazine[47] summarize Cosmatos's message with both Beyond the Black Rainbow and his next film Mandy as that the progressive social, political, and cultural utopias of the 1960s (as represented by Dr. Arboria and his original plans with his institute) went wrong because they weren't prepared yet for what lay beyond Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary's doors of perception, thus inviting the counter-movement in the form of the conservative, right-wing 1980s (represented by Barry).

[48] For this reason Lehmann, in his aforementioned Cinema essay, calls Beyond the Black Rainbow an "even more advanced version" of the social and political themes found in Easy Rider and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Cosmatos noted that critical reception of the film was originally "kind of muted, even downright negative" at first, but it began picking up better reviews after Tribeca 2011.

[51] Mark Feeney of The Boston Globe cited the atmosphere "that's impressively sustained – until it becomes oppressive, then pointless, then laughable," with the concept better suited to a short film.

[55] Positive reviews highlighted the cult appeal, such as Matt Singer of Time Out, who welcomed the return of challenging, surreal midnight movies.

Writing for Inverse in 2017, pop culture critic Isaac Feldberg praised Beyond the Black Rainbow as an examination of Cosmatos' own nostalgia for the sci-fi and horror movies of his youth; "Cosmatos imagines an alternate ‘80s in which their aesthetics can be so completely expressed they assume physical form, seeping through the Arboria Institute like a fog of cultural memory," he wrote.