Funnyman Billy Crystal is playing against type as a troubled psychologist in the creepy new trailer to Apple TV+’s thriller series Before. 

Crystal plays a grieving widower and former child therapist named Eli, who finds his wife, Lynn (Judith Light), dead — possibly by her own hand — and finds a disturbed young boy named Noah (Jacobi Jupe), who literally shows up at Eli’s doorstep. 

The little boy has scratched weird symbols into Eli’s door, bloodying his fingers in the process. As he questions Noah, he realizes Noah is plagued by troubling visions that seem to link to Eli’s past. 

Oh, and Eli’s wife is haunting him, too. 

“He was my first foster,” Rosie Perez says as Denise. “The other parents found him unnerving.” 

“Suffering from hallucinations, repeated expulsions from school,” Eli says of the boy. “I’m starting to think there’s a reason he found me. If we’re connected, maybe I can save him.”

In treating the boy, it becomes apparent Eli’s fixated on the image of a creepy-looking cabin that Noah repeatedly sketches. Eli asks him what makes him mad, and Noah says, “People who do bad things.” 

Then he says to Eli, “You know what you did.” 

With a montage of disturbing images, it ends with Lynn saying to her husband, “What have you done?”

Apple TV+ teases of the 10-episode series, “You’ve never seen Billy Crystal in a role like this.”

Before premieres Oct. 25.

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