Not for the Faint of Heart: 5 Films That Showed Hell

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A cursed hotel standing at the gates to hell, Japanese horror about torment after death, Cenobite demons emerging from a puzzle box, a spaceship that's been to hell.

The Beyond (...E tu vivrai nel terrore! L'aldilà)

A film from cult Italian horror master Lucio Fulci. A young woman (Catriona MacColl) inherits an old hotel in Louisiana, but doesn't realize it sits on a gateway to hell.
A girl with completely white eyes opened her mouth against a gray wall background
Frame from the film "The Beyond"
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The plot becomes a series of nightmarish visions: the undead, monsters, and hopelessness with no escape. The film became famous for its dark atmosphere and ending where the protagonists find themselves trapped in an otherworldly realm.

Hell (Jigoku)

Japanese classic from Nobuo Nakagawa, where hell is shown with maximum realism.
A man sits on the ground surrounded by stones
Frame from the film "Hell"
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The protagonist (Shigeru Amachi) becomes an unwilling participant in a crime and dies, then finds himself in a terrifying world of torture. The film is shocking in how detailed and brutal the director depicted the Buddhist concept of afterlife torment: boiling cauldrons, demons, and eternal suffering.

Hellraiser

Clive Barker's cult horror introduced the world to the Cenobites and Pinhead. The story begins with a mysterious puzzle box that opens gateways to hell. Those who solve it fall into the hands of demons who bring "pleasure through pain."
A girl in a white t-shirt is holding a golden jewelry box in her hands
Frame from the film "Hellraiser"
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"Hellraiser" became one of the most brutal interpretations of hell, where torment is inseparably linked with twisted pleasure.

Event Horizon

Paul Anderson's sci-fi horror takes the theme of hell into space. The experimental ship Event Horizon disappears during engine testing and returns with something terrible aboard. The rescue crew realizes the ship visited hell — and has now become hell itself.
A man stands by a round iron structure surrounded by flames
Frame from the film "Event Horizon"
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A terrifying blend of sci-fi and demonic horror, where hell is "a dimension of pure chaos, pure evil."

What Dreams May Come

Vincent Ward's film starring Robin Williams offers one of cinema's most unusual and beautiful interpretations of hell. When the hero dies and finds himself in heaven, his wife takes her own life and ends up in hell. He then decides to go after her, literally journeying through the underworld to save the woman he loves.
A man and woman stand by a tree with a blurry human figure beside them
Scene from What Dreams May Come
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In "What Dreams May Come," hell isn't depicted as a place of horror, but as a tragic projection of the human soul—stripped of hope and light.

What unites these films is their audacity to show the impossible—a world beyond life filled with eternal torment. Some did it as horror, others as philosophical allegory. But they all force viewers to confront one fundamental question: what if hell really exists? Earlier on zoomboola.com, we covered "UNSAVED": the best internet horror of 2025—and it was shot entirely on iPhone.