Well, other than the cool poster art, there is not much to like about this one. Every character is awful. The acting is bad. The Spanish dubbing is worse. There is little no zero horror or tension.

What sucks is that it starts out interesting enough and I thought it was going to be a nice kidnap/torture type movie ala Hitch-Hike (1977) but the main guy here is no David Hess. Actually, none of the actors in this are interesting whatsoever. The little boy who appears in just a few minutes shows more personality than all the other actors combined.

I will say it did hold my interest for most of it because I kept expecting something interesting to happen after the prayers to Satan, burning up the house, finding the crypt, etc. But nope...nothing of note really happens.

For some reason I really wanted to like this movie but there just isn't much to recommend of it. I was going to give it two stars but the more I thought about it and the longer I typed, it moved down a notch. haha

My rating: *3/4 out of *****

[Thank you alyxstarr!] - I think.

The sounds coming thru their car radio were kind of creepy and gave me some hope, but ended up disappointed.

I searched and could find no way to watch this with English subtitles outside of wonderful alyxstarr. I know there are like 48 subset films and we only ‘have’ to watch 30, but don’t think we should have choices this difficult to track down.

Crime thriller meets horror. These arent just criminals but leather clad burn your house down level deviants. Beyond Terror seems like a generic film but it will steal your wallet when you think it's making love. In part it gets slow drawing out the haplessness of the true victims. When it's not mean spirited it's forlorn, the dance of death hanging over. There is a gloomy slow descent to hell vibe that doesnt always need jump scares or bloodletting. I enjoyed the atmospheric and careful vibe. "Truly I say to you to fornicate is divine " Lola, the hard female crook who defies expectations, played by Raquel Ramírez is my favorite. I've seen other films take this heist gone wrong trope and it's a clever idea.

I liked this and I’ll probably pick up the Cauldron release now. Everyone in this was such a dick. I’m curious how accurate the subtitles are. Was the script really that mean spirited?

For a good chunk of time, I kept wondering if the movie on the disc was the same one on the cover. It eventually gets there, of course, but the opening tone wasn't what I expected.

As others have said, those characters were mean and nasty, even for horror movie characters. They really lingered on the death of the dog. It seemed like that got sequence got stretched far longer than it typically plays out in other films. Then they just continued to pile on with the old woman, but I suppose it served its purpose. I was definitely pleased to see the vengeance play out.

Overall, I'd say I liked it. It's a lean but effective revenge story that maybe distinguishes itself by feeling a little more mean spirited than usual.

For me, I felt like the ingredients for a much better movie were there but it just didn't come together. The good "heist gone wrong" movies get us rooting for at least some of the criminals. But everyone here is just awful, even the hostages. And I was hoping for a more satisfying comeuppance. Except for the last scene (literally for a second) the deaths were off-screen. The location was atmospheric and I liked the gimmick of new skeletons being added to the painting over time.

My second viewing of this film didn't change my opinion. Problem one for me is that there are no characters to empathize with. Most of the characters are leeches on humanity. It is nice to see the crooks get payback, but we don't really care because they are such scumbags. The second problem is that the horror elements take way too long to get going.
6/10

I love this movie. Last night was the 3rd or 4th time I've watched it. This movie was made just 5 years after Franco's death. During his reign, films were heavily censored or outright propaganda. During the late 70s, the country transitioned to a democracy and many filmmakers had artistic freedom for the first time. Spain is also an extremely religious country. When you take all of that into consideration I think it helps us understand that this film was very transgressive for its time.

And yes, the characters in this movie aren't very kind but I think it helps to understand that they grew up in a fascist regime. One character says that police used her mouth like a spittoon and another character reveals that he was sexually abused by a priest after being forced to take heroin. It makes sense that they would be hostile towards the oppressive systems that were in place during their childhood. There's a clear resentment they have towards the couple they kidnap who are living comfortably in comparison. I'm not saying they are justified in their behavior, but there's a nuance that a lot of us are missing when we view the film through our own experiences. There's an undercurrent of wealth disparity simmering between the two groups of characters in this movie and that type of environment often leads to crime and violence. I think it's reductive to just dismiss these characters as bad people when there is some genuinely good, if subtle, characterization to help explain why so they're rebellious against figures of authority and prosperity.

I tend to enjoy slow burns, so I find the movie to be really interesting, especially when taking Spain's history of the time into consideration. The twist that the seemingly sweet old lady that's victimized by the main characters happens to be a Satan worshipper who then places a curse on them, is excellent. I also think this movie might have been an influence on From Dusk Till Dawn: as they're both about a group of criminals that take hostages to help their escape, then encounter supernatural forces even more dangerous than they are while on the run.

I love this movie too. I kept on commenting that even the hostages are utter douchebags. I figured it was going to turn into some rough home invasion, but the whole follower of Satan invoking the devil for revenge was pretty cool. It was interesting to see unredeeming folks get waxed. I searched high and low for the DVD which I swore that I had, but it never turned up. I gotta get the Cauldron blu.