Billy Crystal is going darker than audiences have ever seen him before in "Before," a new Apple TV+ psychological thriller premiering on Friday. But it was not a role that the actor and comedian expected to take on.

The comedic actor is taking a dramatic turn in Apple TV+'s psychological thriller that's reminiscent of 'The Sixth Sense.'

Crystal is an interesting choice to shepherd audiences on this creepy voyage, created by Sarah Thorp. The once-boyish comic actor leans into the trauma drama, his unshaven face gray, his clothes unkempt.

Crystal’s return to the screen is not, in fact, in a comedy series. Though you might be confused after watching the baffling, misbegotten “Before.”

"Before" seems to have been inspired by the M. Night Shyamalan classic "The 6th Sense," about the dead therapist and the boy who can see him. At least "Before" had the decency to come up with a different ending. It's the beginning and everything in between that's the problem.

It's disjointed in its best moments and flat-out bad in its worst, and by the end of the series, it feels like a waste of time.

By “this,” I mean a series of 30-minute episodes where Crystal stabs his hand and neck with sharp objects, dreams of blood geysering out of his body and carves into a child’s skull with a scalpel to extract an imaginary worm. Somehow I don’t see the target audience.