Beyond Evil



On a remote Southern island (god knows where, as we’re never told) an architect and his wife, Larry and Barbara Andrews, move into a suspiciously cheap, but lovely palatial mansion that hasn’t been occupied for over 100 years. The reason for this? The home is said to be haunted by the first lady of the house, Alma Martín, after she and her husband Estaban murdered each other. Estaban ended up being a philandering cad who wouldn’t let Alma leave. So naturally she did the only thing she could: she took up witchcraft to scare the bejesus out of him. Apparently she got so good at it that her plan worked, just not in the manner she intended, because instead of divorcing her, Estaban poisoned her and dropped her body down a well. Not to be outdone, Alma rose from the grave and got her revenge, and now her spirit haunts the house, where she spends her time picking off any soul ill-advised enough to come near it, all so she can keep a grip on her dark power.

Instead of running for the hills upon hearing this story, either because they like to tempt fate or haven’t watched enough horror movies, the Andrews decide to happily settle into the House from Hell that none of the locals seem to want to step foot in (We never see the people delivering their luggage. They literally throw the bags through the front door and vamoose). And of course, quite predictably, weird shit immediately starts happening, as Barbara begins to show slow signs of possession and people around the couple begin to go missing. So it now falls upon Larry and the local shaman to find a way to stop Alma, before Barbara is taken over by the evil spirit forever.



I tried to find some more “skyscraper” horror films to finish out the month, but came up short. So I decided to switch over to regular old haunted house flicks instead. But I almost didn’t watch this one, because the familiar Troma jingle started almost immediately, and after last week I really didn’t know if I had the strength to do two Troma film write-ups in a row (even if I did end up kinda liking Mother’s Day). But hey, Beyond Evil has John Saxton and Lynda Day George in it, so it can’t be all bad, right? Well….no, it’s not. But it’s not all that good, either. Even if I do think it has several points in its favor.


They actually chucked an honest to god person out of a window for this film. I’m kinda impressed…

Okay, let’s get the good out of the way first. This isn’t your typical crappy Troma production, because the cast here is actually very decent. Far better than a cheap production like this would ever suggest. The side characters are on point and have defined personalities. No one is particularly annoying in any way, and Saxton and George have a splendid level of chemistry that helps carry the film through some of its more ridiculous elements. So I was at least partially right in my initial assumption upon seeing Saxton and George’s names that the film wouldn’t be a total wash, because even if the film is kinda ‘meh’ at least they’re good in it.


And I didn’t have to watch John suck on anybody’s toes this time, which is always a plus.

Even the plot itself isn’t all that bad, really. It’s not unique in any way and also highly predictable, but it’s not bad. It establishes the characters, the background, drops subtle (and not so subtle) hints about what’s going on and what’s going to happen, and then manages to bring all the established plot points together in the end. So yeah, the story itself isn’t shocking or unusual for the genre, but it’s still a relatively well put together, though simple, haunted house story.



Instead, the movie’s problems come in two parts. The first is that, though the plot is fine, the way the story is conveyed often ends up being…kind of dull, unfortunately. The beginning and the end are engaging enough, but the whole middle section seems like it’s primarily centered around Larry trying to get Barbara to go to a doctor while putting up with her adamant protests, and his own skepticism in getting involved with the shaman/doctor/faith healer, despite all the super weird crap clearly going down at his house. Establishing these two points would be fine by themselves, but the film lingers on both of them for far, far too long, often ping-ponging back and forth between them several times. Like, we get it, movie. Larry is a skeptic. You really don’t have to have him go back to see the shaman dude 3-4 times to establish this. Especially when said shaman isn’t really all that helpful in the end. Honestly, the whole middle section just feels like it was contrived simply because they needed something to fill up more time, and they either didn’t have the funds to kill off any more auxiliary characters or simply couldn’t figure out what else to do. So the poor film ends up going in an unnecessarily repetitive circle for a bit. Thank goodness the ghost is nice enough to knock a couple people off during this point, or else the pacing would have come to a grinding halt.


Seriously, how many times do I need to see this same scene?

The other glaring issue is the implementation of the film’s absolutely atrocious special effects. For much of the runtime, the film blissfully relies on simple methods like mood, atmosphere, nifty lighting, camera angles, cut-aways and even just ominous music to establish the ghost and her vengeful ghost powers. But then the film starts to get fancy and things start to glow green to suggest her influence. Which wouldn’t be so bad if it was used in moderation. But then the glow starts getting more prominent, and you start to suspect that there might have been a rush job on the FX, because it’s clear the outline of the glow isn’t properly lining up with the things it’s meant to be influencing. But by that time the stupid creepy green ghost laser eyes come out and you’re hoping Larry figures things out soon so you don’t have to deal with that bullshit any more. Because, seriously, WTF? Since when do ghosts have laser eyes? I know I make fun of the overuse of the industrial fan in ghost stories a lot, but that’s still 10x better than watching a ghost try to eye-beam their ghost magic at someone. Even for a cheesy-ass horror movie that just looks silly.


For fudge’s sake…

So despite having some solid good points, Beyond Evil gets a resounding “meh” from me. I mean, generally speaking the movie is fine. The plot is simple, though serviceable, it looks good, has a sweet location, is well acted with likable characters, and even though I see some issues with it, said issues really aren’t all that bad. But the more I think about it, the more I feel like telling Alma’s story would have made for a way more interesting film: A woman turns to dark magic after she’s forced to marry a man who doesn’t love her and is only using her for money and convenience, and he ends up so freaked out by her that he devises a plan to kill her, only for her to come back from the dead to take revenge, because her spite ends up being stronger than death itself. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a far more engaging tale than the “woman is possessed by angry spirit” story we got with this movie. I’m still not saying Beyond Evil is bad. I’m just saying it’s been done, and it’s kind of sad that the background tale they told in less than 5 minutes ended up being leagues more interesting than the actual damn movie they were making. Oh well. At least it’s still a decent time-waster if you’re a fan of haunted house flicks. But if you’re looking for something with a little more meat on its bones, look elsewhere.

Beyond Evil is available on a variety of streaming services.

Beyond Evil is also available on DVD and Bluray.

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