Before, on Apple TV+

Dr. Eli Adler’s new patient will be such a tricky case, he might benefit from consulting with the child psychologist in The Sixth Sense, if he were available (but obviously he’s not, as we all remember). Young, disturbed Noah Sawyer does not see “dead people,” at least not exactly. However, he has plenty of horrifying visions. Inconveniently, his doctor also starts exhibiting symptoms of instability in creator Sarah Thorp’s ten-episode Before, which premieres today on Apple TV+.

If he were a patient, Adler would tell himself he needs to talk about the suicide of his wife Lynn. On some level, he understands how badly he is coping, but he has no intention of changing. Consequently, he is seriously considering closing his practice until his next patient crawls through his doggy-door (frankly, it is hard to believe any lower Manhattan brownstone would have one in this day and age, but so be it).

Frankly, Adler has no thoughts of treating Sawyer when he returns the incommunicative boy to his latest foster mother, Denise. Yet, fatefully, it is the same Sawyer a social worker colleague hoped to refer to him. Sawyer is a difficult patient, who periodically erupts in fits of violence brought on by visions of parasitic worms borrowing under his skin and black spectral forms billowing around him. He also cries out for help in Old Dutch.

Of course, Adler could hardly judge Sawyer to harshly. He is regularly plagued by hallucinations of his late wife. As a result, he maybe understands Sawyer better than any other shrink could, especially when he starts seeing some of the visions tormenting his patient.

It is hard to judge from the trailer whether Apple is positioning Before as horror (they are premiering it on 10/25, after all) or serious psychological drama. There are indeed darkly uncanny dynamics in play. Yet, the episodes themselves are much more ambiguous when it comes to tone and genre elements. It shares a thematic kinship with films like Branagh’s’ Dead Again and Hitchcock’s Spellbound, but it is envisioned through a much more sinister lens. In fact, The Sixth Sense is not a terrible comp, in terms of vibe.

Yet, it works to a surprising extent thanks to Billy Crystal’s surprisingly earnest and restrained portrayal of Dr. Adler. His performance is scrupulously (even rigidly) straight, without the slightest hint of comedy. Frankly, it is hard to find precedent for this serious star-turn amongst his previous releases.

In fact, restraint serves Before well, as in the case of Hope Davis, as Adler’s crisply professional (but not completely detached) pediatric colleague, Dr. Jane Wilkinson. Rosie Perez also dials it down, but she is still probably the show’s most expressive adult as Denise, who refuses to give up on Sawyer, because of her own troubled history in the foster system.

However, the young cast-members probably suffered from some questionable direction. It seems like they were regularly asked for too much or too little, and were generally filmed in disadvantageous ways. Yet, Robert Townsend looks even more out of place trying to supply Before’s only (dubious) comic relief, as Adler’s old crony, Jackson.

Despite some directorial missteps, Before maintains an eerie atmosphere, with a great deal of credit due to some subtly effective sound and set design. Thorp and the battery of writers address several themes that apparently appeal to the Apple development team, but Before is somewhat more successful than The Crowded Room and far better than The Changeling. Recommended for fans of Crystal and Perez (in probably their best roles since the 1990s), Before starts streaming today (10/25) on Apple TV+.