BEYOND THE DARKNESS

Since his parents died in a car accident nine years before, the affluent Francesco Koch has been living with his wet nurse and housekeeper Iris in a villa at the outskirts of a South Tyrolian town. Wanting to marry Francesco and become the new lady of the house, Iris hires a witch to curse his fiancée, Anna. When the witch sticks needles into a voodoo doll, Anna falls ill. At a hospital, Anna reveals she wants to make love with Francesco at least once before she dies. As he kisses Anna, her heart stops beating and she dies. At the villa, Francesco mourns his loss. Iris later breastfeeds Francesco, calling him her "little baby boy".

At the morgue, Francesco injects Anna's body with preservatives. Unbeknownst to Francesco, the mortician sees him making the injection. The funeral is attended by Francesco, Anna's parents and her twin sister Teodora, who studies at a nearby school.

At night, Francesco drives to the cemetery and digs up Anna's body. While Francesco has to change a blown tire on the ride home, a tourist hitchhiker enters the car, and due to the presence of a police car, Francesco is forced to take her with him. After smoking a joint, she falls asleep in the car. At the villa, Francesco unloads Anna's body and starts disemboweling it in his workshop. In the process, he bites into her heart and installs glass eyes into the sockets. After waking up and spotting the corpse, the hitchhiker panics. A struggle ensues, in which she scratches Francesco, who in turn rips off some of her fingernails with pliers. He then chokes her to death.

Iris and Francesco dress up Anna's body and put her on one side of a double bed. Assisted by Francesco, Iris chops up the hitchhiker's corpse and dissolves the pieces in a bathtub filled with acid, then disposes of the liquid in a hole in the garden. She later eats tripe in a way that reminds Francesco of the dissolved body and makes him vomit. This makes her laugh. Later, as he sits at the bedside looking at Anna's corpse, Iris approaches Francesco and masturbates him.

Days later, a jogger twists her ankle near Francesco's home, and he invites her in. They have sex on his bed, until Francesco reveals Anna's corpse right next to them. Another fight ensues. Francesco bites her neck and eats a chunk of her flesh. He and Iris burn her corpse in the furnace downstairs. When Iris threatens to dispose of Anna's body, Francesco gives in and offers to marry her and make her mistress of the house.

Iris invites her old relatives to dinner and announces her engagement to Francesco. Yet Francesco leaves her humiliated. The following day, while Iris is drunk and Francesco is out for a jog, the mortician enters the house to investigate, discovers Anna's body, photographs it and leaves. That night, Francesco picks up a woman at a disco but sends her off after seeing Teodora. When alone in a room, darkness falls in and she can hear Anna's voice warning her of a curse on the house. Walking down the stairs, she spots Anna's corpse sitting on a chair in the hall. Iris, who fears Francesco will actually marry Teodora, opens the door holding a knife, forming a silhouette that makes Teodora faint. As Iris is about to stab her, Francesco intervenes. In the ensuing fight, Iris stabs him on his hand and near his groin. He in turn wrestles her to the floor and bites a cheek off. She gouges out his left eye, and he stabs her in the heart, killing her. Francesco listens to Teodora's heartbeat, then carries her downstairs. After incinerating Anna's body, he dresses and makes up Teodora like Anna's corpse.

When the mortician returns, he finds Iris' corpse and Francesco badly injured near the furnace burning with human remains. As Francesco collapses and dies, the mortician takes Teodora, whom he thinks to be Anna's corpse, returns to the cemetery and places her in a coffin for burial. While he and his assistant are about to nail down the lid, Teodora pushes the coffin open and lets out a scream.

As the cycle of violence continues, Francesco's actions escalate, further entwining death and depravity within the villa. The fate of Anna's body and those around Francesco is sealed by his obsessions and Iris's manipulations.

The ending cements the film’s commitment to transgressive horror, showing the consequences of unchecked obsession and perverse dependency. Francesco's inability to let go of Anna, aided by Iris's twisted maternal influence and ambition, leads to a spiral of violence that consumes everyone involved. The villa becomes a tomb of secrets and perversions, echoing the film’s themes of decay and corrupted love.