Beyond the Gates

Retro horror 'Beyond the Gates' continues the fun trend of 80's throwbacks with just about everything you'd expect: synth score, neon-heavy visuals, and practical gore effects.

It's about two brothers who find a VHS board game in their missing father's video store. When played, the real world and a nightmarish dimension collide, forcing the brothers to complete some blood-spattered objectives in order to free their father's soul trapped in the game.

Unfortunately, as awesome as that premise sounds, the board game isn't as well utilised as it could have been; nor are it's concepts explored thoroughly or explained. The film also features typically implausible horror movie behaviour as the game supernaturally alters to fit the players' lives and otherworldly things just happen to push the story onwards.

But despite that shortcoming, this is still an enjoyable homage to 80's gorefests, with enough character development to forgive the plot's slow and teasing unfurling, some delightfully grisly violence, and a cracking score that bolsters its aesthetic.

6/10

I really wanted to like this but I gave up with 30 minutes left. The acting and writing is horrible. The story is boring. The characters are bland.

Two estranged brothers, Gordon (Graham Skipper) and John (Chase Williamson), reunite to liquidate the assets of their missing father's video store. As they sort out the contents of the shop, the brothers discover a strange old VHS board game—Beyond the Gates—that seems to have some connection with their dad's disappearance. Together with Gordon's girlfriend Margot (Brea Grant), they pop the game's tape into the player and are greeted by a mysterious woman (scream queen Barbara Crampton) who guides them through the horror that ensues.

Take the basic premise of Jumanji and give it a horror twist, and what you have is Beyond the Gates, except that Jumanji was, and still is, a whole lot of fun (despite some horribly dated CGI effects), whereas Beyond the Gates is a crushing bore for most of its running time, with long periods where absolutely nothing of interest occurs (the first 45 minutes are a real test of patience). About the only things the film has in its favour are a few decent gore effects (best being an exploding cranium), a cool synth score, and Grant's impressive rack (the actress wears a tight vest but fails to do a Crampton, keeping those puppies under wraps).

Overall a not unwatchable effort, a story line with certain potential is littered with some enjoyable blood-fest elements. Unfortunately Beyond the Gates is marred by slow paced dialogue, between one dimensional characters, who all clunkily perform their way to the end. The issue here is that before anything begins to get going, you're likely to be half out of your mind with boredom. The 88 minute run time, which was reduced to about 80 after the exclusion of the opening and closing credits, still felt drawn out.

When things did get going, Beyond the Gates takes some particularly odd turns to create none too convincing or all that scary "monsters". In retrospect the film could well have borrowed more themes from greats such as Hellraiser and utilized them to bolster its own version of hell (assuming that's what the movie was trying to get at).

This may well appeal to die hard horror fans, but you're likely to be disappointed.

It has the vibes of Hellraiser and some of Fulci's "Gates of Hell" trilogy, mixed with some obvious similarities to Jumanji (though purely owing to the subject matter) but with some nice comic touches, which allows the movie to get away with a few of its budgetary constraints.

Our central characters, Gordon, John and Margot, play a retro VHS board game and unlock a gateway to some dark netherworld, in an attempt to discover what happened to Gordon's missing father. Needless to say opening such portals can only lead to trouble!

Fortunately for us, trouble of the gruesome kind.

The film is very much an homage and tribute to many things from a previous generation of entertainment, such as the board game, the VHS rental store and some cool gore effects which nod to the era of the video nasty. This is its strongest element because the story and setting is a tad threadbare, without feeling amateurish.

Fans of the genre and such from-the-heart productions are bound to enjoy what this film has to offer as it nicely projects the infectious sense of fun and creativity that led its creators to make the film in the first place.

It's not going to change the world of horror as we know it but I bet it will inspire other startup movie-makers to make that movie they have in them.