Curtain

An independent film which has an original sort of story but isn't able to deliver much for its audience. This doesn't look as cheap as a Troma movie or a Hammer house movie but by the same token it's not glitzy and glamorous either, not by a long way. A struggling nurse moves into a new flat, strange things begin to happen and she finds a space/time portal in her bathroom. There are some really surreal parts to the film, random dreams and flashbacks, crazy confrontations with weirdos. I found myself wondering what the hell I was watching and having a dilemma trying to figure out if I was enjoying the film or not. Decent pace, interesting enough characters, an original idea... I wish I could have liked this more but unfortunately it felt like something was missing. Whatever it was that was missing really stopped me from really enjoying this, which is a pity really. Close, but no cigar.

This is a quirky, independent comedy masquerading as a surreal horror film. It gets the surreal part right but the rest of the staging and execution is so cheap as to make this feel like a Troma movie. It doesn't do much for a film's realism when you have actors in support who go around mugging for all their worth, actors linked to a storyline which is so slight as to be not worth bothering with in the first place. Basically, a frightened young woman discovers that her shower curtain is hiding a portal to another dimension. That's it; that's the set up, although not much is done with it.

One of the most arresting parts of the film are the weird dream visions that the protagonist experiences. These are a mish mash of similar bits in THE EVIL DEAD and THE RING, and quite weird, although not as just plain bizarre as other elements in the film. At times I felt that I really should like it, and perhaps with better resources the writer/director could have done something truly special here, but sadly the acting is just too poor and the script so sub par that I couldn't stand it. It feels like nothing more than one of those "make it up as you go along" type movies.

All I want is my time back. It is worse then I thought. The final twist will make you say "Really?"

Just save yourself......

I found The Gateway to be an excellent indy movie. The story is good and it kept me entertained the whole way through with trying to figure out what's going on with this portal in the bathroom that sucks in shower curtains! I highly recommend this one, especially if you like indy horror/sci-fi films!

I have a couple of issues with it though... 1. It's only about 72 minutes long. I appreciate a movie that doesn't overstay its welcome, but I think this one would have been better if they spent a few more minutes explaining how the 'gate keepers' came to be. These appear to be young men who wait in the woods for things to happen and we somehow chosen to do this.

2. What happens in the last 10-15 minutes is telegraphed. It doesn't take away much from the movie, but I think just with some different editing, that at least there might have been a better reveal at the end.

Regardless though, I think this is worth the watch!

The entire storyline is moronic and the figures in it are sad sack losers who are a waste of air. They are the kind of people who you walked across the street to avoid them in everyday life. The really creepy part of that is that I have a feeling the actors are equally losers who fell into these roles because the films creator could not find enough homeless people to join this production.

The two leads are a couple of people so dislikeable, that within 5 minutes of "meeting" them you begin hoping that the "monster" appears and ends them. The female lead seems to be someone with emotional problems that have permanently overwhelmed her. And the male lead is an annoying loser who REALLY needs to get a life.

Everything about this crap is extremely low budget to the point that one of the "Special" effects strongly resembles an effect used in the 1960s Batman show...and every but as corny Whatever makes the shower curtain disappear....please come back and make this movie and its cast disappear!!!