(For an explanation of what these posts in October are, see the parent post.)

Synopsis

A woman inherits a Louisiana hotel only to find it is built on top of the one of the seven portals to Hell — and the door has been unwittingly opened.

Opinion

One of the things that bother me about Chinese and Italian films from before 1990 is that 95% of them are all dubbed.  They felt it was more cost-effective to not worry at all about location audio, and just do all of the dialog and foley in the studio afterwards.  This is very jarring to me, and makes it very hard to suspend disbelief.  The Beyond is an Italian film, and even though the two leads are English and speak English, they are also dubbed.  It is unsettling.

Your next thought might be “that would make for an unsettling horror film, then?”  Unfortunately, it doesn’t come to that.  The opening of the film is great, and sucks you in, but it goes downhill from there.  Italian films of the late 70s to early 80s have wonderful imagery, but for their more fantastical offerings, they fall short on story.  The story isn’t explained enough, and you can get by on practical horror effects only for so long.  The movie plays like someone who saw Night of the Living Dead, The Shining, and The Devil’s Rain and tried to make a movie combining all three.  It doesn’t work.

The effects themselves range from very good to laughable.  Blood thinner than water doesn’t help.

Recommendation

Skip it, and watch The Devil’s Rain instead.