> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.killscreen.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Wandering the hypnagogic kaleidoscope with Parasomnia
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/wandering-hypnagogic-kaleidoscope-parasomnia/
- Published: 2014-10-30T11:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2015-11-17T17:06:52.000Z
- Description: The 2010 sf/slasher hybrid Beyond the Black Rainbow was the best argument for shooting on film since…well, since the days where there was no other option. Directed by first-timer Panos Cosmatos (son of George P. Cosmatos, director of the hands-down best movie where Sylvester Stallone eats pizza with
- Author: Astrid Budgor
- Tags: News, Experimental game, labyrinth, parasomnia, Surreal, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-26 09:39

The 2010 sf/slasher hybrid *Beyond the Black Rainbow* was the best argument for shooting on film since…well, since the days where there was no other option. Directed by first-timer Panos Cosmatos (son of George P. Cosmatos, director of the hands-down best movie where [Sylvester Stallone eats pizza with scissors](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjDz6t9OGEQ&ref=killscreen.com)), it ripples with visual imagination and a drifting, surreal approach to narrative. Just look at this thing. LOOK AT IT.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/previously/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/btbl1_big.png)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/previously/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/btbr2_big.png)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/previously/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/btbr3_big.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/previously/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/btbr4_big.jpg)

*Oh yeah*. There’s a scene in this film that feature a weird a jittering line running down one third of the screen, like a fuckup in the darkroom. But they didn’t go back and reshoot, no. Because what gives *Beyond the Black Rainbow* its flavor are those 35mm textures: the silky grain, the push-pull of one color bleeding into another, the spine-tingling play of light across the lens.

*Alien: Isolation* gets into this a bit, with its 70s-accurate anamorphic flares splitting the frame and the rainbow glow of chromatic aberration smearing this into that. But acatalept’s *Parasomnia* is a full-on love letter to visual distortion, a worthy peer to *Beyond the Black Rainbow*‘s fascination with texture. Acatalept made the game for the Unreal Engine October Game Jam, and describes it as “anxiety-inducing.” *To say the least*.

With no warning, the game throws you into darkness. In the distance there’s some kind of pulsing light, illuminating a gleaming labyrinth in split-second washes. You run toward it, and the labyrinth overtakes you, faster than seems possible.

Like being trapped in a sensory deprivation tank with a malevolent strobe light.

From there, it’s like being trapped in a sensory deprivation tank with a malevolent strobe light. Feeling your way around in this overwhelming darkness is, frankly, terrifying. Absurd amalgams of geometry loom in afterimage; a cyclopean sphere swivels endlessly; the corridors and caverns seem assembled by some cold algorithm.

Which, turns out, they are. Or they will be, in the full version of the game. *Parasomnia* as it stands is merely a slice of the sensory madness that acatalept has planned: procedurally generated labyrinths, shifting layouts (a la *Cube*; no word on murderous razor-wire grids yet), traps, and something haunting the maze. Yeah, that’s all this game needs! MORE dizzying terror!

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/previously/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/screenshot_620_big.png)

Frankly, a pursuing force seems to gild the lily a bit. There’s already such a strong, transportive sense of isolation and confusion here that in the ten minutes I spent with the game I felt a little ill. The strobing light, digging into my dilated pupils; the bloated bassy clang that accompanies each flash; the impossibility of navigating this space confidently or ever accomplishing anything, really, ever. Because each time I try to get my bearings, the dark floods back in. And, to think of it, what the hell is making that noise?