Portal

I downloaded this cheapie from the spotty On Demand lineup. One of those people who need a helping of crummy horror any given weekend night, I was fully prepared to laugh out loud. But... "Portal" bests its shoestring budget with engaging actors and an imaginative storyline - even if the script doesn't rise above mundane. And out of nowhere is Kevin Dobson, looking about two years older that he did in "Kojak"; I half-expected Telly Savalas to barge out of the cellar and yell "Crock-aaahhhh!" He must be shooting monkey glands and Mexican vitamins.

The CGI/FX budget must've been blown on a couple of corndogs and a Coke, so the movie depends on its cast, especially Conrad, Conwell, and in her few scenes, Barth. They put enough into "Portal" to make you care about the characters, and we share, a little, their growing dread and creepy deja vu. There's a snippet of scene in which a finger dipped in what must be blood draws a languid circle on a naked belly, and you wish this movie and the rest of modern horror had a LOT more erotic sensibility. These days, danger-sex is given up to pimple romance or mechanical soap-opera hypergasm. Where is Jesus Franco when we really need him?

A very disjointed story about a coven of witches holding people captive at a motel that exists in a time loop. The acting is passable but the characters are uninteresting and uninspired. The witches are using the humans to breed a "specal" child but we never find out why. There were some gratuitous scenes of violence and sex that didn't seem to further the plot but they did provide a nice break in the lack of action. Poorly edited, difficult to follow and in the end predictable. If you like bad movies for their own sake this would be one to check out. It is easy to see why there is so little information available for this flick.

This is a (very) low budget movie that is more in the realm of fantasy than horror, but I consider it a success. Two guys on their way to a "gig" get lost in a weird fog and are forced to stop at a hotel that just appears out of the fog. One can feel there is something wrong with it, since the beds are dusty, the concierge is a weird old man and they serve raw meat for a dinner no one asked for.

I can't say much more without spoiling it, suffice that you get to understand what is going on through bits and pieces as the main character does and... it's not pretty.

Bottom line: the movie was really slow for my taste and the low production values really threw a wrench in the works, but the effort was decent, the idea interesting enough, even if not really explored. If I was the producer of the movie, I would read all the criticism in the comments and come up with a better, more complex version, maybe with the same actors and budget.

Calling this movie low-budget would be an understatement. Wow, it's as if someone shot this movie through a webcam. Yes, it's that bad.

Now, on to the story: 2 guys are driving to a gig nearby when suddenly they get stuck in a huge cloud of fog. They strand in a strange village with a strange motel where they find out the time is different from inside their car and that there's something strange about the people inhabiting the village.

Of course this doesn't very original but I figured the atmosphere would make up for it. Well, there's little to no atmosphere to be found thanks to the crappy camera quality. The script could have saved it but it's a total mess. I had no idea what was going on and frankly I stopped caring near the end. The acting of the main characters is decent but the other actors were awful, part of the reason I stopped caring.

Avoid this and spend your money and time on better horror movies with a decent budget.

I felt there were enough non-genre fans saying how bad this movie is that I felt compelled to tell other die hard genre fans(like me) how good this movie is. Actually its a like it or hate it type film depending on your taste, but the script does deliver and the cast/director does their best with the micro budget they had. Everyone is wining about the camera they used, but to be honest I have no idea what everyone is talking about and I don't see the problems. I saw this on my laptop and my flat-screen TV and nothing about the camera work makes it any worse then any other low budget independent SciFi-Fantasy-Horror film. To me it does very good for the budget.

This is, to me a cult movie and it may only have a cult following, I don't know..? I have seen it about 10 times on cable and I admit its very decent, its far the best and I definitely wouldn't run out and buy it, but if you have nothing better to watch on a rainy Sunday afternoon and it comes on cable give it a watch you may find yourself liking it:)

Gave it 7 stars, it deserves 6, but because the IBMD rating is totally undeserved that's what I gave it.