THE BEYOND

In 1927, artist and warlock Schweick works on a painting in Room 36 of the Seven Doors Hotel in New Orleans. He protects one of the seven gates of hell, which, if opened, will bring about the end of the world and the death of mankind. A lynch mob drags Schweick from his room and into the hotel's basement, killing him for practicing black magic. Meanwhile, a white-eyed woman reads from the ancient tome "Eibon", prophesizing the opening of one of the seven gates.

Decades later, in 1981, Liza Merrill inherits the hotel and moves from NYC to refurbish and reopen it. A worker glimpses a white-eyed woman through a window and falls off his scaffolding. Local doctor John McCabe takes the injured man to the hospital. The bell for Room 36 rings, but Liza dismisses it as a malfunction, as the hotel has yet to open. A plumber named Joe investigates the lack of running water. In the flooded basement, he uncovers a bricked-off area and accidentally opens the gate to hell. He is attacked by a ghoul, blinded, and killed. The bodies of both Joe and Schweick are discovered by a maid, Martha, and are taken to the local morgue.

While driving into town, Liza encounters a blind woman named Emily and her guide dog, Dicky. Emily warns Liza that reopening the hotel would be a mistake and that she should return to NYC. At a bar, John urges Liza to give up on the hotel project. However, she refuses, thinking it is her only chance at financial success.

Later, Emily tells Liza about Schweick and warns her not to enter Room 36. Upon examining Schweick's painting, she states it was part of his seance, and his own death counted as a sacrifice to curse the land. After Liza scoffs at the warnings, Emily's hands begin to bleed, causing her to run with Dicky from the hotel in terror. Liza noticed that neither of them made audible footsteps as they left. Despite Emily's warning, Liza enters Room 36 and discovers the Eibon as well as Schweick's corpse nailed to the bathroom wall. She returns to the room with John, but the Eibon and the corpse are gone. Liza tells John about her encounter with Emily, but he insists that no blind woman lives in town. Furthermore, he says that the house where Liza claims Emily lives has been abandoned for years.

Liza's architect, Martin, visits the town library to inspect the hotel's blueprints, which reveal an ample, unexplained space in the basement. Upon discovering this, he is knocked off his ladder by an unseen force, breaks his neck, and is paralyzed. As he lies helpless on the floor, tarantulas eat him alive. Back at the hotel, Martha is cleaning the bathroom in Room 36 when Joe's corpse emerges from the bathtub water and kills her. John breaks into the old house where Emily is supposed to live. It is abandoned, but he finds the Eibon and begins to read it, learning that the hotel is one of the seven gates to hell.

Emily is confronted in her home by the animated corpses of Schweick and the other recently deceased. She commands Dicky to attack. Although the dog chases away the undead, he next turns upon Emily, killing her. Meanwhile, Liza returns to the basement and is attacked by an undead worker. In her escape, she runs into John at the entrance. Upon investigation, there is no sign of the undead worker, and Liza begins to question her sanity. The two drive to the hospital and find it deserted except for Dr. Harris, Joe's daughter, Jill, and a horde of the undead. Harris is killed by flying glass, and John dispatches Jill when she transforms and attacks Liza.

John and Liza escape down a staircase but discover they have again arrived in the basement. They proceed through the flooded labyrinth and stumble into a wasteland—the same landscape in Schweick's painting. No matter where they turn, they return to their starting point. They are ultimately blinded, just like Emily, and disappear.

The gate to hell is ultimately opened, and Liza and John find themselves trapped in a surreal, otherworldly landscape that suggests they are lost in the beyond.

The film’s ending is a bleak, surreal descent as the protagonists realize escape is impossible. Their journey through the hotel’s horrors leads them not to safety, but to a desolate, dreamlike wasteland that represents the afterlife or eternal damnation. Fulci’s final images reinforce the film’s themes of cosmic horror and the futility of resisting supernatural forces, sealing its reputation for one of horror’s most nihilistic conclusions.