A gory film with a surreal atmosphere where the dead are coming back to life to kill the living.
- Entertainment factor: ★★★★☆
- Gore factor: ★★★★★
- Surreal factor: ★★★★★
The Beyond is the second film of the Gates of Hell trilogy by Lucio Fulci. The first film is City of the Living Dead (1980) and the third The House by the Cemetery (1981). While not a direct narrative trilogy it is more a thematic trilogy where all the films have an occult surreal vibe. While the first two films revolve around the opening of the gate of hell and the dead starting to rise and kill, the first and third film have a cemetery in common. The main star in all these films is Catriona McCall.
Duration 1h 27m
Plot
Liza Merril inherits a hotel in Louisiana. She doesn’t know that the hotel is built on one of the seven gates of hell. In 1927 a painter named Schweick is a warlock and protects the gate. An angry mob lynches him and they kill him, while a white-eyed woman is reading from the book of Eibon that contains a prophecy of the apocalypse when the dead will rise to roam the world.
Now in 1981 the gate is opened and is starting to kill people, beginning with Liza’s plumber Joe. Liza meets a blind white-eyed woman called Emily and her dog Dicky. Emily tells her to leave town, but Liza has plans for the hotel. Liza also befriends John a doctor at the hospital who investigates the death of Liza’s plumber, but when she tells him about her strange encounters and strange things that happen around the hotel, he doesn’t believe her.
In the meantime her architect Martin is looking for blueprints of the hotel and finds something that shocks him and also leads to his gruesome demise. All these dead are about to attack Liza and John has no other choice than to believe her. Together they must find a way out of this hellish nightmare where the dead won’t stay dead.
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Short Review
The first film was more a remnant of the seventies with its surreal atmosphere, an illogical narrative and an incoherent story. But is also has some pretty nasty and gory practical effects. This second film does repeat the same gore and gruesome kills. And it also has an apocalypse of the dead coming to life and start a killing spree when the gate of hell is opened.
The film is also shot with a surreal atmosphere, but instead of pure vibes, it is now explicitly used as a story device. Especially at the end when they descend the stairs of the hospital and find themselves in the basement of the hotel and as they walk further they end up eventually in the surreal painting of Schweick symbolizing the hell they have entered.
While in the first film main character Mary could prevent the apocalypse from happening with the help of Peter, Sandra and Gerry, now Liza and John are trapped in a hellscape while probably in the outside world the dead roam the streets and kill everybody in their path.
The focus on the story is equally on gory body horror and gruesome deaths that are excruciatingly long scenes and very disturbing to watch and on the surreal events that are happening around Liza. It’s still heavy on the female paranoia though. John doesn’t believe Liza until he sees it with his own eyes.
Her encounter with the blind Emily and her dog Dicky is strange and gets even stranger when the house Emily lives in was nice and lovely when Liza visited her, but appeared to be abandoned and even dilapidated when John entered the house. That leaves the question if Emily is real or not, and more importantly what she is, as she begs not to have to go back there. Her white eyes are also the same as those of the woman in 1927 when the painter Schweiz was killed by an angry mob for being a warlock. She reads from the book Eibon. A book of prophecies of the seven gates of hell. Just like in City of the Living Dead (1980) the book of Enoch spoke of prophecies. This book of Eibon resurfaces in 1981 and draws the attention of Liza.
While they prevented the apocalypse in the first film now the dead are coming to life and act more as zombies out for blood and brains and can’t be stopped. Where the first film had an onset of the events, the priest hanging himself, now it’s more vague why the gate of hell is opened.
The Beyond is a sequel that manages to open the gate of hell which leads to gory gruesome deaths, surreal events and a doomed ending.
Read more about the Gates of Hell Trilogy:
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