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.

Slow as molasses tale of a gang who decide to take over an abandoned house to grow weed in. In an upstairs bedroom is a gateway to...somewhere hellish. There's too much build-up that doesn't do anything to heighten the experience; we don't know them any better, the better to care about what happens to them. Then there's too much silent watching. The mood is dark and dreadful, but that's not enough. It feels more like a crime saga, but still, one I don't care too much about.

This type of the haunted house is gonna git ya story has been done so often, it's almost impossible to recall how many times I've seen it, here just given a miserable, suburban council house retread.

Assured cinematography & decent performances can't mitigate the terrible decision to make this a total misery-fest, with a cast of entirely unsympathetic characters & a sound track which would drive the most mentally sound to consider topping themselves.

The few horror elements that there were, missed the usual tricks to make the audience jump, this may have been the intention, to avoid overused tropes, but they were genuinely needed here, to help the viewer along. The gateway of the title, does indeed appear & does offer some intrigue, what, why, how etc, but it all comes to nought & we're left with no answers, thanks movie!

The fault here lies with the writer & director, single-mindedly making what they want, regardless of how this won't entertain the audience, you can make a dark, torturous ride, but you have to take the paying customer with you.

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.

The thing that stands out most about this film is the horrible sound quality throughout.

Most times the sound design ignores important details about what is going on during a seen, but somehow manages to focus on unimportant things and add distracting, poorly recording sound effects to draw attention to them.

In almost every scene I could point out an example, it is a persistant problem that by the end of the film goes beyond distraction and becomes extremely annoying.

One example is a scene where they are sitting next to a wooded area on a sunny day. There is no background noise, nothing to go along with what is on the screen, just silence. Could this be a thematic design choice? No not really, in the next scene near the same location during a phone call, they add sounds you might expect like birds and light wind. However, the mix is bad even on those sounds and they just seem odd.

All in all the sound imo is the worst aspect of this film, it is just always bad. In many scenes the effects they use are extremely bright and sibilant, which is always annoying when sound production teams give no attention to this all too common problem. If you use cheap, generic microphones, take time to educate yourself on production techniques you can use to alleviate that weakness.

Ok rant about horrible sound is over, how about the rest of the film? Well, visually it is ok I guess? But to be honest it just has a really boring look to it most of the time. So while I might say the cinematography is competent (especially when compared to the sound design which is abysmal and I wouldn't even say amateurish), it is in no way compelling.

If you don't like the boring look, well don't hold out hope for the story or performances. Everything about the movie's story is just boring. The presentation is done in a way that it almost feels like the filmmakers want you to be bored.

If you like boring movies, give it a try I guess. If you dislike poorly done, sibilant sounds, skip this 100%. If you can literally think of just about any other way to spend your day, do that instead. IMO watching this movie is probably about as entertaining as reading this inexplicably long review.