'The Beyond' is One of the Bleakest Horror Films I Have Ever Seen

 

Credit to The Beyond (1981) — True Myth Media

I was so confused why The Beyond was considered to be one of the best Italian horror films ever made. I finally decided to give it a watch, and I loved how brutal the film was. The bleak ending was like a sucker punch, and I now consider this conclusion to be one of my favorite horror movie endings. 

The Beyond is like a disturbing Giallo film that does not hold back on deaths throughout the entire film, even if several scenes do come off a little silly. The film still does a damn good job portraying a dark story, and I loved every second of it. 

The Beyond follows the story of a woman named Liza Merrill, who now owns a hotel that contains one of the seven portals to Hell. 

Credit to The Beyond

Poor Liza had no idea that a man in the year 1926, who was a painter, was responsible for protecting one of the gates of Hell, the portal to the Seventh Hell. He paints the Seventh Gate, and claims that whoever will open the gate will bring the destruction of mankind and the end of the world. He was murdered in the basement by a group of people that same day. 

Now in the year of 1981, Liza is now the unfortunate owner of this hotel. 

While so many strange things begin to take place before the hotel even opens, a plumber named Joe accidentally discovers the portal to Hell. He opens it up, and is killed by a zombie. His body is discovered along with the painter’s and both bodies are escorted to the morgue. 

Damn, now that is rough. 

Liza then meets a blind woman named Emily, and her dog, Dicky. Emily pleads with Liza, telling her that opening the hotel will lead to the gate of Hell opening. Liza refuses to give up the hotel, determined to make it a financial success. She runs into Emily again, and she gives her another warning, begging her not to open room 26, where the painter once stayed. 

Liza ignores these warnings once again, and Emily quickly runs away from her, once her hands suddenly begin to bleed. Liza finds it strange how Emily and Dicky’s feet did not make a single sound when they left, but she disregards this phenomenon. 

Liza opens room 26 and finds herself in a total nightmare. 

Credit to Reviewing Lucio Fulci’s Gates of Hell Trilogy, Part 2: ‘The Beyond’ (1981) — ScreenAge Wasteland

She discovers the body of the painter nailed to the wall of room 26. She panics and runs to a man named John, who she had began to form some sort of bond with. She shows him the room, but the corpse is now gone. She tells John about what Emily told her, but John informs her that no blind woman lives in the town, and that the house Liza had met her in has been abandoned for years. 

Liza’s architect and maid are the next ones to suffer terrible deaths, as the impending doom is slowly starting to invade the hotel’s inhabitants. John takes matters into his own hands and breaks into Emily’s house, finding no one there. Instead, he finds information about the Seventh Gate of Hell that is located in the hotel. 

Emily is later confronted by the dead victims of the hotel, but she is killed by a possessed Dicky. Liza decides to investigate the basement where the painter was killed, and runs into a zombie. She escapes and runs into John. She takes him back to the basement, but like before, there is no corpse. 

John does believe her this time around, and he takes her to the hospital, as a place of refuge. 

This turns out to be a really bad idea. 

The duo discover that the hospital is filled with the undead. 

Credit to The Beyond (1981) — Review — We Have Issues

When John and Liza arrive, they are shocked to find the hospital is littered with zombies, confirming that the portal is Hell is officially taking over the world. Only two survivors are present, a doctor and the daughter of Joe. The four of them struggle to survive against the undead, but they are able to lock themselves in a room to hide from the zombies. 

They realize they are in a room where they keep the dead bodies. 

The bodies come to life and attack the group. The doctor is unfortunately killed by flying glass, and the daughter of Joe becomes a zombie herself, leading to John being forced to put her down. 

John and Liza make a run for the staircase of the hospital, but they find themselves teleported back to the hotel basement. 

What follows is one of the most disturbing endings I have seen in a long time. 

Credit to Why The Beyond’s Final Image Perfectly Represents Italian Horror Movies

John and Liza realize they are now trapped in the painting depicting the Seventh Hell. They try to escape the wasteland, but no matter how far they run, they keep returning to the same spot. Liza and John continue to try to escape, but the duo stops in their tracks when they lose their vision, like Emily. 

They stand in complete horror for a couple of seconds before they vanish into thin air, staying trapped in the Seventh Hell forever. 

I cannot stress enough how much I loved this ending. It came out of left field, and I truly started to wonder if they had been given plot armor while everyone else died around them. It turned out that the evil forces were most likely playing with them, before taking them away to Hell forever. 

I also loved how we don’t see what happens to the rest of the world. We only get one scene with the hospital, and it really makes you wonder what sort of evil the world was experiencing as we watched John and Liza get one of the worst fates in horror history. 

The Beyond is a brilliant Italian horror film that every horror fan will love. The third act is amazing, and that ending will forever be embedded in my memory forever.