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Unknown Beyond Director: Ivan Zuccon
I say let’s add Ivan Zuccon to that list. And let’s add him up there at the better end with Fulci, Argento (when he was good) et al. Because Unknown Beyond confirms that The Darkness Beyond was no flash in the pan. Zuccon is a major horror talent and he’s here to stay (for further proof, check out his third feature, The Shunned House). Darkness was written by Ivan himself but this semi-sequel was scripted by Enrico Saletti so there’s something of a change in tone, though it’s still unashamedly Lovecraft-ian. It’s a more complex story, with more characters - there’s more action and more interaction. Also a whole heap of religious iconography, stirring up that whole Catholic guilt thing that underlines some of the best Italian horror. The opening sequence is amazing as a stumbling soldier comes across a crucified man and, at his feet, a pram containing a crying baby which, on inspection, turns out to be a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Blood drips from the sky, then rises back to Heaven. What the jiminy is going on? One thing which Unknown Beyond definitely shares with its predecessor is a dreamlike structure which plays fast and loose with causality and the sequence of events, indeed with reality itself. The Old Ones-engineered supernatural apocalypse that we glimpsed in the first film has enveloped the world, but now we are a generation on and Captain Ian Hicks (the ever reliable Emanuele Cerman) leads a small band of survivors hiding out in some catacombs. Cerman was Private Randolph Carter in The Darkness Beyond - and Hicks is having dreams in which he is called by that name. Is he the same character? Who knows? Locked up in a cell in the catacombs is a painted-face witch, Keziah (Roberta Marrelli, who was Elena in the first film), who serves the Old Ones and seeks to seduce Hicks. Meanwhile two members of the group, Valerie (Liliana Letterese) and Pickman (Alessio Pascuti - Private Walker in Darkness) have gone missing.
Valerie, wandering across the desert at night, is gripped by hands from under the sand and raped by something unseen. She subsequently slakes her thirst at a river of blood, from which she fills her canteen. A day or so later she is back with the main group. Hicks has translated some surviving parchments (possibly the ones created by Al-Caleb in the first film’s prologue) and knows that the only way to defeat the Old Ones is to find the Necronomicon. He sets out with two comrades, Alan (Piergiorgio Schiona) and Boris (Francesco Malaspina - Darkness Beyond’s Sgt Clark). Back in the catacombs, the swiftly pregnant Valerie gives birth to an ultra-fast growing cocoon from which emerges, only minutes later, a full-grown man. Played by Michael Segal, the first film’s Lieutenant Salgari, this character is credited as ‘il figlio dell’Altrove’ - ‘son of the beyond.’ Indeed, the Italian title of this film is Maelstrom: Il Figlio dell’Altrove (the working English title was Call of the Beyond). He proceeds to bloodily slaughter his way through the cast. What the film is leading up to, via some quite startling imagery, is a three-way battle between Segal’s character and the unborn children carried by sole survivor Anouk (Giorgia Bassano - that’s not a spoiler by the way as she’s not identified by name until late in the film) and Keziah. Three will be conceived, the prophecy states, but only one will survive to become heir to the Old Ones... With an extra twenty minutes’ running time over the first film, Unknown Beyond can cram more in and that may be why it seems slightly less languorous (or more hurried, depending on how you look at it). The main characters are well-defined and we care about what happens to them - although I’m still not certain about Keziah the witch. Marrelli comes close to overacting sometimes in a role which is, I think, a difficult one for foreign audiences to grasp.
There was a time when Italian horror cinema was the finest in the world. But the last spaghetti scarer to really achieve international acclaim with critics and audiences was Michele Soavi’s superb Dellamorte Dellamore and that was nine years ago. Since then, what have we had? Pupi Avati’s obscure The Arcane Sorcerer, Sergio Stivalleti subbing for the late Fulci on Wax Mask, Massimiliano Cerchi’s laughably inept Creatures from the Abyss and Satan Claus, Argento treading water with The Stendhal Syndrome, Phantom of the Opera and Nonhosonno - and let’s not even mention the justifiably derided Fatal Frames. The genre needs a shot in the arm - and here it is. Unknown Beyond confirms the arrival of a startling new talent. Ivan Zuccon is the best thing to happen to Italian horror, arguably to horror cinema in general, in a long, long time. MJS rating: A- DVD: Amazon.com | ||
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