Lucio Fulci
...E Tu Vivrai Nel Terrore! L'Aldilà

Lucio Fulci is one of the greatest Italian directors, a pioneer of cinematic art and one of the most impactful filmmakers in our horror film scene. What I am about to review is considered by many as his masterpiece, a mature work with a strong aesthetic and directorial impact that forcibly inserts itself, despite Fulci defining himself as "a terrorist of genres" due to the contrasting nature of his works, among the cornerstones of the B-Movies Splatter genre.

The prologue is entrusted to a segment of film turned sepia, where a young blind woman, Emily, reads the passages of an ancient book titled "Eibon," interspersed with a flashback set in 1927 New Orleans, in which a painter accused of witchcraft and hiding in an inn is caught by a group of enraged men, whipped with chains, and then crucified to a wall in the basement and covered in quicklime. No detail is omitted: the chains leave deep lacerations on the painter's face and body, and when he is covered in lime, the camera shows his face in the process of dissolving, leaving the viewer with an idea of what will be shown in the rest of the film.
We then move to the main story, set in modern-day New Orleans: Liz Merrill is a former model who has recently inherited the aforementioned hotel, now in ruins, and has decided to reopen it by beginning renovations. But the works do not go as planned: a painter, frightened by the vision of a blind woman's face, falls from scaffolding and dies. Meanwhile, a plumber, venturing into the building's flooded basement, is killed by a mysterious hand that, sticking out from a hole in the wall, nearly rips his eyes out. Ignoring the advice of Emily, the blind woman from the prologue who appeared in a vision to the unfortunate painter and meets Liz to warn her of the dangers she faces by renovating the hotel, the young ex-model finds herself entangled in a spiral of dream-like apparitions, until, terrified, she realizes the true extent of the evil that is about to be unleashed by opening one of the seven gates of hell, which lies beneath the hotel's foundations. It will be too late for Liz, who, along with Dr. McCabe, will witness the awakening of the dead in the form of zombies at the local hospital, culminating in the ruthless, magnificent finale where the two find themselves wandering for eternity in the fateful "beyond."
As a good B-movie, the film is not without, albeit small, flaws mostly due to the very low production budget. One only needs to notice the scene with the clearly fake tarantulas that kill Liz's friend midway through the film, or some superficial acting elements, although generally good, or the excessive implausibility of others, such as the gun with infinite ammo in the zombie-infested hospital scene. But it's easy to overlook such details in favor of excellent direction provided by Fulci, in one of the best performances of his career, and an overall excellent product, capable of keeping viewers on the edge of their seats during the most suspenseful sequences (Emily's killing by her own dog, an almost explicit reference to Dario Argento's Suspiria, also referenced here for Inferno, from which the theme of the door connecting to another world is borrowed) and with eyes closed during the most exquisitely splatter segments. It is necessary to highlight in this regard the magnificent production work on special effects, both artisanal and effective, capable of disgust in just the right way, reaching its peak with the maid Martha's eye puncturing and the possessed girl's skull explosion at the hospital.
"The Beyond" is a great film because it stands out among genre titles for its very successful horror component and scenes that have left a mark in cinema history (the epilogue and Emily's appearance on the deserted highway above all), offering a glimpse of the different characterization of the Italian horror cinema style compared to overseas. While the Italian cinema has indeed an idea of horror more inclined towards psychological and philosophical connotations, well represented by Fulci in the shocking finale of the film in question, the American one could instead be connected to a more pragmatic fear, tied to more concrete aspects of daily life (look, for example, at the social representative meaning in Romero's The Night Of The Living Dead). The plot, although derived from films that came to prominence in the '80s centered on haunted or cursed houses, extended with some elements that wink at Argento and a few others at Romero's "zombie" revolution (even though the zombies in Fulci's film were imposed by German distributors), manages to engage viewers and immerse them in a visionary and violent work, perhaps the most extreme of the director.
"Now you will face the sea of darkness and all therein that may be explored."