We’ve seen plenty of horror classics get the remake treatment over the years, some of them working better than expected and others leaving us wondering why anyone bothered in the first place. Now another major title is entering that conversation, and this one has our attention.
Variety has broken the news that Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond is getting a fresh remake through a new partnership between Hangtime International Pictures and Severin Films. The project will be an English language reimagining of Fulci’s 1981 Italian horror classic, with the companies looking toward theatrical, streaming and physical media releases.
There is currently no director or cast attached, so we are still very much at the beginning of this one. The new film will serve as the first project from the partnership, which is being established to pursue additional genre titles for new versions over the next couple of years.
For horror fans, The Beyond needs very little introduction.
WATCH THE ORIGINAL TRAILER FOR “THE BEYOND” BELOW
Directed by Lucio Fulci, the film follows Liza Merril, played by Catriona MacColl, after she inherits an old hotel in Louisiana. What she doesn’t know is that the property sits above one of the seven gateways to Hell. From there, Fulci takes the story into increasingly surreal territory as the hotel becomes the center of a supernatural nightmare.
The film was released in 1981 and became the middle entry in what is often referred to as Fulci’s unofficial Gates of Hell trilogy, alongside City of the Living Dead and The House by the Cemetery.
For us, The Beyond remains a classic by many people’s standards, including ours. Fulci brought a level of violence and gore to the screen that became one of the defining characteristics of the Italian horror and giallo movement, while surrounding all of it with a strange, dreamlike atmosphere that made the film feel unlike anything else coming out of the genre at the time.
That combination is exactly what makes this remake so interesting.
How do you recreate The Beyond for a modern audience without sanding away the things that made the original so memorable?
There is a certain gritty look and dirty feel to Fulci’s film that is difficult to separate from the experience of watching it. The practical effects, strange pacing, unsettling imagery and almost fever dream approach to storytelling give the movie an identity that goes beyond its plot. A modern production can certainly reproduce the events of the story, but capturing that particular atmosphere could prove to be the bigger challenge.
Severin Films is an especially interesting company to have involved. The label has spent years restoring and releasing cult, horror and exploitation films, including Fulci’s work, and recently partnered on a massive six disc 4K release of The Beyond featuring a restoration from the original camera negative along with extensive archival material.
Hangtime co CEO Frank Murray described the partnership as an opportunity to introduce Fulci’s work to new horror audiences while also recognizing the potential for the wider Gates of Hell universe. The company has specifically pointed to the possibility of revisiting the other films connected to that trilogy, although no additional remakes have been officially announced at this point.
That is where things get particularly interesting for longtime Fulci fans.
There is a difference between remaking a movie because the story has potential and remaking one because the filmmakers genuinely understand why people still care about it decades later. The Beyond isn’t remembered simply because it has zombies, ghosts, gore and a gateway to Hell. It has a very specific personality.
We aren’t against the idea of somebody taking another swing at The Beyond. Horror should evolve, and filmmakers should be allowed to reinterpret older material. We just hope whoever eventually takes the reins understands that the original wasn’t polished, clean or particularly interested in playing by conventional rules.
That dirty, unsettling quality is part of the movie.
Now we wait to see who gets the job, who steps in front of the camera and, most importantly, whether the new The Beyond can open the gates without losing what made Fulci’s version worth walking through in the first place.