Back again for a third entry into modern Italian horror is Mattia De Pascali’s Beyond the Omega. Compared to folk horror The Forbidden Lands and animated gothic production Resurrection Corporation, Beyond the Omega (Il tuo sepolcroβ¦ la nostra alcova in its native Italian) brings the erotic nakedness of giallo films and puts a rather deranged, somber storyline to it involving a man’s descent into darkness after losing his fiancΓ©e.
A shy and compliant man is just about to get married when a maniac kills his fiance. He seeks comfort in a lonely cabin in the woods with absurd relationship with a life size doll, but he is unable to avoid a spiral into madness.
Beyond the Omega, IMDB
Murder, masturbation, and madness define this film. After prudish and devout Iris is assaulted and murdered, Aris is beside himself with grief, so much so that he takes his grief — and pent up sexual tension — out on a sex doll. The longer he spends with the doll and the more murders happen around the city, Aris obsesses over his “new” lover Persephone. He is unable to tell reality from fiction, endlessly haunted by his physical needs and increasingly sadistic desires.
Beyond the Omega definitely has a callback to Euro-horror of the 70s and early 80s with its rampant sexual nature; this movie is rated 18+ for a reason, not just because of the sex, but because of accompanying acts like assault and necrophilia. Aris is shown partaking in lewd, criminal acts throughout most of the movie. Though Beyond the Omega includes these scenes with very few cuts (yes, we do see genitalia), they are filmed in a way as not to imitate pornography; the point isn’t to arouse, it is to show the depth at which Aris is falling into his own physhological mess.
On that same note, Aris’ personality changes as the film goes on. At first, Beyond the Omega shows him as a man domineered by his soon-to-be-wife. But after her gruesome death, he expresses violent anger and lets his impulses run free. In between bouts in bed with a zombified Persephone, he is argumentative with friends on one hand, and paranoid with neighbors on the other. Only sex can stave off his impending total break from reality.
Beyond the Omega may be a lot of T&A on the surface, but its underlying story shows a crack in the sensitive, loving façade Aris once had. There is no saving him from the deeds he has done and will do again. Beyond the Omega is yet another entry into new-age Italian horror, presented beautifully by De Pascali. And though it is in Italian, no amount of subtitles could distract me from the scenes appearing on screen, be it raw nakedness or piles of limbs torn from an unsuspecting victim.
Beyond the Omega is streaming now on Fawesome. Follow writer/director Mattia De Pascali on Instagram for more.
