The Beyond

Fulci stops pretending to care about narrative and makes a film that runs entirely on dread. A woman inherits a Louisiana hotel built over one of the seven gateways to hell, and the dead start arriving. Scenes connect by mood rather than cause, and the ending is a held image of despair that no studio note survived.

Approach it as a nightmare you are inside rather than a story you are following, and it becomes one of the great horror films. Approach it as a plot and it falls apart in your hands.

Fabio Frizzi's main theme does a lot of the work. So does the refusal to explain anything.