Gateway

The lo/no budget film is a business card for the director, if you scour youtube, you can find the early work of Shane Meadows and it was clear to anyone watching those one location, no budget short films that this director should be given the means to expand his stories, so rich are the characters and narrative.

Gateway could just as easily be so considered, this is the tale of a crew of petty criminals looking to break into the big time but choosing the wrong house for their plan, the characters are well fleshed out and dialogue sounds authentic coming from the individual players in the story. If I could point out just one thing for any future work, and this is completely subjective, something I wondered about while watching, would be the blocking, I felt that such an intricate meshing of two storylines would have been much more dynamic if the characters moved about a bit more during dialogue scenes, but as I say, completely subjective, they may have been static to add to the sense of powerlessness that they gang were experiencing as they struggled to get a grip on the supernatural happenings in their hiding place.

The intensity was extremely well executed, there is a very effective, surreal sequence where the main protagonist is unable to move as he witnesses his own history playing out in front of him, it really hit the mark, anyone who has considered their own historic deeds or words will identify with the scene.

Overall the film was engaging, believable dialogue, I'd love to see what Niall Owens could do if freed from the restraints of a limited budget, I'd say, watch this space.

The industrial products of Western cinema do not distance enough from bad movies made in Los Angeles and copy their manias, even though they tell stories that are not only unusual, but better than all the horror clunkers produced in California. Apart from my usual complaint about the abusive use of sound effects and music, «Gateway» is a good first horror feature by Irishman Niall Owens, with a very strange and ingenious premise: a group of marijuana suppliers (who bear little resemblance to marijuana growers who consume it at the same time) is looking for a safe place where they can sow, care for and harvest the "holy weed".

However, each one has a tragedy behind that is a load too heavy for them to carry. They are typical characters of the marijuana subculture and (disorganized) crime, immersed in an unhappy intrigue that contains some elements that we already know from other horror movies: settling of scores inside a haunted house, where creditors of life, ghosts in search of vindication and pale entities that control the space manifest themselves and interact with the living with dire consequences.

Everything comes to a fair and consistent end, thanks to the images created by Owens and his cinematographer Ger Murphy, which are sinister enough to unsettle us, even though it all happens in a day in broad daylight: the house is sunny, and the exteriors are bright. However, the filmmakers were not confident enough to minimize the manipulative sound and omnipresent musical score. This said aside, it is a highly recommended film, especially for those who like the genre... with a twist.

The acting is great and the cinematography is great. The plot is incredibly boring and hard to make sense of. I am not even sure I would classify this as horror, maybe more like a psychological drama. Slow burn is one thing but geez.

I didn't watch this one for a while after adding it to my collection. It was just another small budget horror thrown in the watch later bin. So glad I finally got around to watching this film. The camera work is good. Shots are beautifully set up. The characters are well developed. It reminded a bit of how Stephen King would always give you enough about the victims to care when he had the monster get them. A lot of horror tends to make the victims "deserve it" and that's what I thought I was getting here but instead I got was characters that while horrible, were also incredibly sympathetic. The writer made me care and that matters in good horror. The ending was very well done and over all I really enjoyed this movie. Some other reviews mention it being boring or slow, I found it was a very nice level of suspense but attention spans run short these days.

Definitely a keeper.

This has got to be one of the most boring movies i have ever watched. Literally, NOTHING happens. It's just talk, talk, talk...then minute-long shots of the faces of the actors brooding. There was one scene of a man staring at the camera with his mouth open. Then he talks around the house till he sees two other men taking drugs in slow motion. That went on for a solid 3 minutes. What the point of that scene was not even the director knows. Just an awful movie. This isn't horror. The only scary thing about this movie is the idea of having to sit through it again. You might be thinking, was there anything redeeming about this movie? Sure. It was filmed really well. But that's it.