User Reviews

A copy of the Necronomicon - the fake book* that H. P. Lovecraft used for his book - has brought dark forces to our plane and allowed them to wage war against humanity within the bodies of their long-dead family and friends.

The Darkness Beyond - also known as L'altrove - was one I found on a list of Italian movies made after the days of Filmirage. Shot on digital video by director and writer Ivan Zuccon - who followed this with Unknown Beyond - this has a lot of style despite its budget and untrained cast. Zuccon has continuted making Lovecraft-themed movies like Colour from the Dark and Herbert West: Re-Animator.

Look - it's not perfect. It's not anywhere near the visions of Fulci or Bava, but I'm excited that Italian filmmakers - yeah, I realize that this is 22 years old, but Zuccon has a movie in production now - are still out there making movies.

*Two members of the Magickal Childe scene - a New York City book store that was the major focal point for American magic/magick from the 70's until the 90's - Khem Caigan (the Necronomicon's illustrator) and Alan Cabal claimed that the book is a known hoax. My theory has always been that Peter Levenda, an occult author who wrote the book Unholy Alliance, is Simon, as the copyright notice for this book is in his name.

Shot on digital video, THE DARKNESS BEYOND is the first in a trilogy of low budget Italian horror films devised by brainchild writer-director Ivan Zuccon. Ostensibly they're Lovecraft adaptations, although on closer inspection THE DARKNESS BEYOND is merely inspired by the themes of the horror writer rather than being an actual adaptation of his work. Of course, as is the case with any film with the slightest whiff of Lovecraft, there's name-dropping galore, from the run-through of Lovecraftian entities at the film's opening to the appearance of the Necronomicon, and the naming of a central character as 'Randolph Carter' – although here he's a soldier!

Aside from the dodgy Lovecraft references, THE DARKNESS BEYOND is very much a typical shot-on-video horror film. The acting screams amateur at every opportunity and none of the performances in the film are particularly memorable. The worst element of the film is the story, or rather the lack of it. Zuccon seems to think people running around the countryside and up and down tunnels makes for a plot, well I'm afraid not, and certainly not in this case. This is one of those abstract films in which plot threads are left untied and the plot device that Hitchcock used when he killed Janet Leigh in PSYCHO is taken to an extreme; there's a succession of leading characters, all of whom are bumped off or disappear only for the film to concentrate on somebody else. As a result it's impossible to like or sympathise with any of the characters involved in this one.

The main inspirations for the film seem to be THE EVIL DEAD (of course, this film is complete with tracking low-level camera shots) and THE BEYOND; in the Fulci film, the main characters enter the 'Beyond' at the film's climax, whereas here that action takes place at the film's opening. There are some obligatory gore effects, including a nasty torture sequence familiar to fans of films such as HOSTEL, an impromptu Caesarean birth, and other bizarre incidents. Unfortunately, the English subtitles on the print I saw have been poorly translated, only adding to the confusion, so the viewer is left with a bewildering and, I'm afraid, uninteresting sequence of images that make little or no sense. Definitely a case of style over substance, although to be fair this was Zuccon's first attempt as director. A sequel, UNKNOWN BEYOND, followed, and I only hope it has more of a story than this one.