Portal

I downloaded this cheapie from the spotty On Demand lineup. One of those people who need a helping of crummy horror any given weekend night, I was fully prepared to laugh out loud. But... "Portal" bests its shoestring budget with engaging actors and an imaginative storyline - even if the script doesn't rise above mundane. And out of nowhere is Kevin Dobson, looking about two years older that he did in "Kojak"; I half-expected Telly Savalas to barge out of the cellar and yell "Crock-aaahhhh!" He must be shooting monkey glands and Mexican vitamins.

The CGI/FX budget must've been blown on a couple of corndogs and a Coke, so the movie depends on its cast, especially Conrad, Conwell, and in her few scenes, Barth. They put enough into "Portal" to make you care about the characters, and we share, a little, their growing dread and creepy deja vu. There's a snippet of scene in which a finger dipped in what must be blood draws a languid circle on a naked belly, and you wish this movie and the rest of modern horror had a LOT more erotic sensibility. These days, danger-sex is given up to pimple romance or mechanical soap-opera hypergasm. Where is Jesus Franco when we really need him?

Calling this movie low-budget would be an understatement. Wow, it's as if someone shot this movie through a webcam. Yes, it's that bad.

Now, on to the story: 2 guys are driving to a gig nearby when suddenly they get stuck in a huge cloud of fog. They strand in a strange village with a strange motel where they find out the time is different from inside their car and that there's something strange about the people inhabiting the village.

Of course this doesn't very original but I figured the atmosphere would make up for it. Well, there's little to no atmosphere to be found thanks to the crappy camera quality. The script could have saved it but it's a total mess. I had no idea what was going on and frankly I stopped caring near the end. The acting of the main characters is decent but the other actors were awful, part of the reason I stopped caring.

Avoid this and spend your money and time on better horror movies with a decent budget.

A very disjointed story about a coven of witches holding people captive at a motel that exists in a time loop. The acting is passable but the characters are uninteresting and uninspired. The witches are using the humans to breed a "specal" child but we never find out why. There were some gratuitous scenes of violence and sex that didn't seem to further the plot but they did provide a nice break in the lack of action. Poorly edited, difficult to follow and in the end predictable. If you like bad movies for their own sake this would be one to check out. It is easy to see why there is so little information available for this flick.

I felt there were enough non-genre fans saying how bad this movie is that I felt compelled to tell other die hard genre fans(like me) how good this movie is. Actually its a like it or hate it type film depending on your taste, but the script does deliver and the cast/director does their best with the micro budget they had. Everyone is wining about the camera they used, but to be honest I have no idea what everyone is talking about and I don't see the problems. I saw this on my laptop and my flat-screen TV and nothing about the camera work makes it any worse then any other low budget independent SciFi-Fantasy-Horror film. To me it does very good for the budget.

This is, to me a cult movie and it may only have a cult following, I don't know..? I have seen it about 10 times on cable and I admit its very decent, its far the best and I definitely wouldn't run out and buy it, but if you have nothing better to watch on a rainy Sunday afternoon and it comes on cable give it a watch you may find yourself liking it:)

Gave it 7 stars, it deserves 6, but because the IBMD rating is totally undeserved that's what I gave it.

Portal starts as two musicians make their way to a gig, Hooke (Chris Condrad) & His mate Gibbs (Alexander Martin) have been driving for hours in a thick fog that seems never ending when they are nearly run off the road by a truck. Stopping & getting out the friends decide to head to a nearby motel to spend the night & wait for the dense fog to burn away, the motel has a creepy owner named Benedict (Kevin Dobson) & the other guest's seem sort of weird too. Hookes decides not to eat the meat & veg which turns out to be a good move since it's full of mind altering ash that makes you forget that you have been stuck in the same motel for months repeating the same thing over & over again. Benedict is part of a coven of Witches who want to breed & use the guest's for that purpose, Hookes has to convince his friend & the other guest's to remember & fight back or they will never leave there alive...

Directed by Geoffrey Schaaf this is a rather confused supernatural horror thriller that had the potential to be a decent twisty turny thriller but a really bad script & bad editing sinks it, basically it's not very good although it could have been. The script is a mess that has a few half decent ideas but wastes them & there's not enough explanation for what's going on. We never find out what the portal is or how it works, the script never elaborates on why these Witches want to have a baby or why they are using strangers, there's no reason given as to why they keep these few guest's alive & just repeating the same day for months on end & unless I missed something where did Hooke get a girlfriend from? I mean he ended up at the motel with just his mate Gibbs but about halfway through he suddenly has a girlfriend, poor writing again I feel. If Benedict is the only one who can exit the portal how does Hooke manage it? Why is it always so foggy? It's meant to be ash I think but it doesn't look like ash. The Witches are given no background, I don't even understand why they are trapped there since they keep saying they will be free soon but free of what? At almost 90 minutes it's a bit too long & the confusing narrative just makes for a frustrating viewing experience & quite simply is difficult to enjoy despite the potential to be something different.

The film is quite dark, even inside the motel the lighting is very subdued & the pitch black foggy exterior adds little. There's a blatant reference to John Carpenter's classic horror film The Fog (1980) which Portal obviously takes some of it's inspiration. The gore isn't great, there's a stabbing, a bit of blood & a scene in which a load of maggots burst out of some woman's love tunnel. The film is otherwise generally unremarkable, there's no real atmosphere or tension or scares & the confusing plot doesn't help things.

Apparently filmed at the La Crescenta Motel in California this has low budget production values which are alright but nothing special. The acting isn't great, again it's alright but nothing special.

Portal is a low budget supernatural themed horror film that has a mess of a script & is badly edited as well, it has a few decent ideas but they are lost in the rubbish.