For the first thirty minutes or so of Gateway, you’ll probably find yourself wondering exactly what sort of film you’re watching. Superficially, it’s a grounded and gritty tale, set in Ireland, telling the story of Mike (Tim Creed), haunted by the recent death of his sister who took her own life, leaving Mike himself traumatised from having found her body. He owes money to the thuggish Cyril (Jimmy Smallhorne), and he and his low-grade mates take the opportunity to use a long-abandoned house as a cannabis-growing facility as a means of generating some much-needed hard cash. None of them are initially especially troubled by a door in the house that just won’t open…
Gateway initially presents as a routine low-budget crime caper, focusing on Mike and his crew and introducing us to their various financial and personal dilemmas. It’s slow, not hugely compelling and doesn’t seem likely to be heading anywhere particularly interesting. Fortunately, things start to pick up at the house, which possesses a strangely disquieting atmosphere. The ’door’ itself is nothing special, but when it opens, it starts to exert a strange influence on the group, and whatever is behind it begins to tear them and their uneasy friendship apart. Then there are the mysterious, black-clad, wordless strangers who drift into the house…
Gateway is nothing if not a slow-burn experience. It’s sparse and minimalist, with performances with unusual naturalism, but if you’re looking for eerie visuals or jump scares, you’ll need to take yourself off elsewhere. It’s a film about atmosphere and building a palpable sense of dread as there’s something going in in the house that’s unspeakable and unsettling and ultimately inexplicable and unexplained. Its sense of growing menace is underscored by an effective sound design characterised by creaks and rattles and discordant whispering combined with a quirky score from Tony Langlois.
Gateway is the dictionary definition of the sort of genre film that catches you unaware, sending you in one direction before quietly nudging you into somewhere deeper and darker. Some may find the film underdeveloped visually, but director Niall Owens has turned a low budget to his advantage by crafting a film that asks its audience to do a lot of the heavy lifting by soaking up the film’s slightly off-centre narrative and other-worldly atmosphere along with its cast of resolutely unstarry characters and actors. An intriguing first effort.
GATEWAY is out now on Shudder.
