Just Beyond Review: A Bewildering Anthology by R.L. Stine

Just Beyond Review: A Bewildering Anthology by R.L. Stine

Posted by Asha Prasad

Thursday 14 October 2021

Review Series Review

"Just Beyond," a new Disney anthology series inspired by R.L. Stine's novels, is an eight-episode anthology series that offers amazing and thought-provoking stories about a realm just beyond our own, including witches, aliens, ghosts, and parallel universes.

Each episode is absolutely distinct, with a new cast of characters and performers, making this series stand out from everything else on Disney+ thus far. Because each episode is 30 minutes long, the pacing for each tale is typically very rapid, with a brief set-up before getting directly to the primary emphasis of the storey and a climax. For the Halloween season, make them all into single bites of frightening delight.

The anthology kicks off with The Amazing Spider-Man and Gifted director Marc Webb’s short Leave Them Kids Alone, which has Mckenna Grace in the lead along with Nasim Pedrad. The segment deals with conditioning children and making them compliant to the norms, even those who stand out. A School for Difficult Children is used to tell the narrative. Due to its obvious plot and drab presentation, this is the anthology's poorest storey.

The second piece, Parents Are From Mars, Kids Are From Venus, is a jumbled, uninteresting short about two kids who discover something strange about their parents. It's also one of the two portions that has science fiction themes. Even a reference to Steven Spielberg's E.T. isn't enough to salvage this storey.

However, Which Witch, featuring a fantastic Rachel Marsh as a teenager with unusual abilities who struggles to blend in with the average crowd, kicks up the pace of the anthology. The episode is plenty of laughter and also covers important themes such as embracing one's own individuality and avoiding peer pressure.

The finest part in Just Beyond is without a doubt Standing Up For Yourself. The storey follows a bully named Trevor Larkin, whose father pretty much runs the town, and spans almost a witty but just version of Groundhog Day. Trevor's life, as well as that of the town, changes after he assaults a specially-abled adolescent at school. The episode is also the most cinematic of the eight since it is told entirely from the perspective of a bully.

The Treehouse, the last episode, is about a teen whose father died a year ago. He is sent to an other reality after lightning strikes his treehouse, where he meets his mother and father, but the only problem is that he is not their son in that realm. The moving narrative explores loss and the process of reconstructing one's life.

Stand Up For Yourself, We've Got Spirits, Yes We Do, My Monster, and Which Witch — in that order – are our best selections out of the eight. Because the episodes are under 30 minutes, it's ideal for a weekend binge or a fast viewing during your lunch break.