Michael A. Martinez This is a tough film to review.I remember back in 1996 going on the hunt for this movie after hearing about it through various horror/zombie/gore websites on the early days of the internet. Back then, simply finding this movie was a revelation and to see that it was actually professionally made was the frosting on the cake, as most underground horror movies (think FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, etc.) tended to be amateur efforts. This film did not disappoint albeit with many misgivings.After a few decades and many rewatches and re-evaluations, I have to say it's not the easiest movie to watch. Pacing-wise it has the nasty habit of speeding up and slowing down repeatedly, as though the writers and director just didn't really care about things in between the gore set-pieces. As a result, I didn't care much either as most of the dialog couldn't be more banal and the characters more hollow. Both stars Warbeck and MacColl do their best with their lines, but their characters literally come from nowhere. There's even dialog suggesting that one or more of the side-characters may be imaginary. Okay, so if Arthur, Martha, etc. are all imaginary or purgatory souls, etc. why can't the main characters also be imaginary and why don't they act more consistently off-kilter? Is this all some dream? Why care about any of this? A few scenes fleshing out the relationships & motivations would have helped enormously.The scenes involving the blind woman who may or may not be there to help could have been creepy and added some tension, but instead she's the most dull character in Italian horror history, serving up nothing but confusing exposition. Also even though some characters are supposedly not real, they still have the habit of dying horrible, extended deaths.Then come the zombies! Oooh boy does this film take forever to get there. They're not the usual gut-munching variety but seem to shamble around slowly looking for people to grab onto and murder with whatever sharp thing is nearby. It turns out they're just as easy to kill as the zombies in any George Romero movie with a shot to the head, but even the well-armed individuals in this film frequently forget to aim for the brain. I know body-squibs are a lot easier than head-squibs, but good grief it's irritating when characters act like total idiots.I've heard of this film described as the triumph of style over content. Fabio Frizzi's score is certainly celebratory and bombastic (including a chorus), but maybe something lower key in a Tangerine Dream/Jay Chattaway variety would have worked better to keep the pace up. THE BEYOND demonstrates excellent cinematography, editing, and direction similar to Fulci's other films from the time. However I can't really forgive how much of a dull mess the experience of watching this film can be without frequent use of the FF button. It's frustrating in that between this, ZOMBIE, CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, and HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY, there's a high-water-mark of the 80's zombie horror masterpiece somewhere in there if you pluck out elements and trim the fat. It's all over 6 hours of movie with only 80 minutes of it any good.

Jody Bruchon The "most helpful review" as of the time of this review is one that proclaims "the atmosphere is so thick you could cut it with a chainsaw" and pulls out a fandom gatekeeper card with "if you haven't seen this cult masterpiece don't call yourself a horror buff." I am here to tell you that this 10/10 review could not be more wrong and that you will benefit greatly from not bothering to watch this film.First and foremost, let's get the gore out of the way. I'm sure for the time it was pretty good but it is unconvincing and has aged poorly. The blood is runny like fruit punch and there is an unfortunate combination of actors doing things a person would simply never do and shots lingering far too long. Some of the effects are well done but too many of them are bad for reasons other than the models used for the effects. Way too much time is spent on lingering gore shots.Oh dear god, the music. The music is terrifically inappropriate for a horror film. It's hard to explain just how out of place it feels. Imagine you see a gory scene and in the middle of the gory scene you start hearing a song that sounds like it should have a 1970s movie detective looking for clues in a building with no tension whatsoever. Yeah, it's really that bad. For a movie that's notorious for gore and connections to Hell the music is horrible.I watched in English but it's almost certainly a dubbed film. The dubbing is atrocious but it's also weirdly good-seeming in parts. The verbiage chosen in some areas (mostly towards the start) matches mouth movements very well and doesn't sound too unnatural for English...but it never quite seems right and it gets far, far worse as the movie goes on. I had subtitles on for some of the time as well and the subtitles don't match the verbal utterances well at all. Both are so bad that it's hard to look past it. Maybe it'd be better if I turned the audio off and just watched in silence with the subtitles...The plot? It's simplistic. It's one of those "and then this happens...and then this happens...and then this happens..." movies. The structure of the story is garbage. We are not led to like or care about any of the characters. There are a couple of jump scares that got me but the horror atmosphere is simply not there. You know something bad is going to happen long before it happens and the thing that happens is likely to be poorly executed. Character motivations are never clearly expressed except for the main female character to some small extent. This movie's concept had a lot of potential but the execution is just plain c***.If you don't see this film, you will miss nothing. It doesn't even have the "so bad it's good" thing going for it. It was not completely incompetent but it was bad enough that I never want to see it again, not even ironically.

Michael Ledo A hotel in Louisiana is built upon one of the seven gates of hell. It was walled up in 1927 and was real;eased later in 1981. This was supposed to be satanic, but the zombie like walking dead would classify this as a zombie film. I was rather bored with the film.The restoration was excellent, which allowed us to know how horribly dubbed it was. Not worth a rental.

brandamnatoms The Beyond, like most horror films that came out between 1978 and 1992, spends most of its time revealing in a shower of blood. Each attack, each death feels like an attempt to not only upstage any previous bloodletting, but an endeavor to find new, creative ways to kill its cast (dogs and spiders going a long way). What The Beyond is crippled by, however, is a completely incomprehensible plot, even by horror standards. To avoid spoilers (for there is still fun to be had with this film), all the audience needs to know is this: ignore following the story. The headache it will induce is far more frightening than the film. There are hotels, zombies, possessions, and gateways to Hell, to count a few obvious turns, but none of it connects very well, and a film like The Beyond is more concerned with the bloodshed than how it gets to the moments of murder.See, I heard about this film from a book I've had for years, "Lurker in the Lobby," by Andrew Migliore and John Strysik, about films featuring either direct, or obvious, H.P. Lovecraft influences. As an avid fan of Lovecraft's I thought I would give this film a look (and to Migliore's and Strysik's credit, they too warned the story was a horror all its own). As a fan of Lovecraft inspired horror, this film still had some merit, and was enjoyable from that view. Sure, it's not entirely cosmic horror (the ending, perhaps, comes closest to being cosmic), but there are enough nods to Lovecraftian tropes that it worked. Would I watch The Beyond again? Not likely, but for the brief hour and nearly a half I was mildly entertained. The Beyond works as a quick Saturday afternoon flick if you are a Lovecraft fan who doesn't mind ignoring a film's story, and not much else.