Portal (2009 Video) User Reviews

Confused supernatural horror thriller.

[poolandrews · 3/10 · 5 April 2010]

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.

Strange movie

[prozacme · 3/10 · 15 January 2011]

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.

It's what's for dinner! ...Raw!

[SanFernandoCurt · 3/10 · 28 September 2010]

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?

Sympathy for the devil

[siderite · 6/10 · 19 September 2009]

This is a (very) low budget movie that is more in the realm of fantasy than horror, but I consider it a success. Two guys on their way to a "gig" get lost in a weird fog and are forced to stop at a hotel that just appears out of the fog. One can feel there is something wrong with it, since the beds are dusty, the concierge is a weird old man and they serve raw meat for a dinner no one asked for.

I can't say much more without spoiling it, suffice that you get to understand what is going on through bits and pieces as the main character does and... it's not pretty.

Bottom line: the movie was really slow for my taste and the low production values really threw a wrench in the works, but the effort was decent, the idea interesting enough, even if not really explored. If I was the producer of the movie, I would read all the criticism in the comments and come up with a better, more complex version, maybe with the same actors and budget.

Story Line

[bpeck13 · 6/10 · 7 September 2009]

Talk about a bizarre movie! Two friends (played by Chris Conrad and Alexander Martin) are stuck in the fog and get run off to the side of the road by a passing vehicle. Since their car is stuck, they get out and wander around the fog until they find themselves in the town of Mercy. They plan to spend the night and then go on their way. After they wake up, they find out that it is 6 p.m. (not a.m.) and they are sitting down to dinner not breakfast. Dinner consists of rare meat, Brussel sprouts, and wine.

As we progress in the movie, we find out that the people have been there longer than they thought--months in fact--and the food is tainted with "ashes" which makes them forget everything except for "now" and their hosts (Benedict, Elizabeth, and Armand) are really witches. Everyone is stuck in Mercy (including the witches). The only way for the witches to get out is to produce the perfect baby (although we are never told exactly what the baby will be used for--only that our three witches are competing with other covens to be the first to have the perfect baby). In a bizarre satanic ritual, women are raped in order to get them pregnant.

Slowly, John Hooke (Chris Conrad) starts remembering his life over the last several months and the truth about what is going on. Eventually he discovers the way to leave Mercy is through a portal and that his girlfriend is one of the pregnant women. After rescuing his girlfriend and getting her out of Mercy, he goes back to settle things once and for all.

I got the movie because I am a Chris Conrad fan, and although I do not like movies about witches and Satan, the acting was good and the storyline keeps your interest. I hope in the future, Chris stars in "nicer" movies.

Very Decent micro Budget Sci-Fi/Fantasy Horror Film

[Indifferent_Observer · 7/10 · 3 November 2011]

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.

A decent camera can't be THAT expensive...

[stalkingwolf83 · 3 December 2010]

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.

Now I know waaaAAAaaat, the cat sang in hell after it was killed by curiosity! Enjoyably weird twisting tale of dread.

[Foreverisacastironmess123 · 6/10 · 1 December 2011]

I am a big fan of the endless day( or in this case, endless dinner date!) situation. I've only seen it elsewhere ever in Groundhog Day, and one terrific episode of The X-Files. It's 32 mins in that the events repeating thing begins, or does it? There's 2 buddies, one remembers that what happened before is happening once more, the other doesn't. That was an interesting spin on the idea, putting it in a horror movie. I like the possibility that the two guys had already arrived at the motel before you first see them do. It is later revealed that there were originally four people that first arrived, another guy named Jack, and Hooke's wife. That's why she's there later, he just doesn't remember arriving with her, it's just not explained to you in so many words. That was very cool. But alas, this movie is never quite as mind blowing as it could be. I really liked the assortment of quirky characters in the dining room. Kind of reminded me of a Stephen King short story. I mean, it is verging on ridiculous-the endlessly repeating Brussels sprout dinner of doom! This movie was pretty strange, but I've seen stranger. It wasn't so bizarre as to be incomprehensible, far from it. The whole vibe is very weird. Not atmospheric, you couldn't call it creepy. Kind of jokey, but great fun and enjoyable if given half a chance. There's a whole lotta fog in this movie. It's almost like that minor classic in part, just "cheaper". The "portal" in Portal, that travels to and from the forever limbo motel of death called Mercy is actually one of those road tunnels with a bit of smoke and a little electrical noise. Ooh! And you can only get through it in an enchanted army wagon. It's as lame as it sounds! I thought Alexander Martin was the funniest guy in the movie. I found that his various jokes and one liners made a lot of pretty boring scenes more fun and enjoyable. There's a funny sequence where a newlywed couple book in for the night and for some reason are immediately sacrificed by the cultists. It's funny because the guy gives such a stupid goofy scream just before he gets offed. I can't believe that clown has been in anything else, he stunk! Poor Tamera Zook! No offence to the sweety, but with an odd bird like appearance like that, it must be hard to get too many roles. There's a really gross moment where her character births a ton of bloody squirming maggots. Nice! I really like Mike Kimmel as one of the unwitting guests. He played a heavyset fellow with a Hawaiian shirt. He made me laugh and smile without even trying. He had been in more stuff than any other member of the cast. I wasn't surprised. The merry band of cult weirdo people were pretty interesting also. A butch, British-sounding lady, who was kinda scary with her crazy hair and off-centre beauty. She had a VERY dramatic acting style. She was always strutting around all sultrily, like someone told her she was beautiful or something. I thought Mary Stein was interesting as a bizarre and scary cruel nursemaid who I think was supposed to be some kind of demon in disguise. She's so distinctive looking. I do remember her from Babe 2. There was also a nicer sassy babe of a cultist, Angell Conwell, who tries to help Hooke(with an E!)escape the time loop motel. Sigh, she dies for her treachery. All the cultists are pussyfooting around for one of those magic demon baby births. It's actually not like that's a big part of the plot or anything, at least it didn't seem that way. I just liked the film mainly for the laughs and the quirky characters. The final scene of the movie is both lame and kinda scary. Lame because a cross in a hospital room falls upside down and the camera zooms into it with a cheesy 123 pan, and scary because Hooke's wife, who was apparently in the motel the whole time, gives birth to the aforementioned demon baby, which you don't see but gives out one scary-ass piercing wail just before the credits roll, and some very strange musical choices begin. There are pictures of behind the scenes type stuff during the credits. It looks like everyone had a very good time and I think that shows in the film's upbeat atmosphere. Time loops, enjoyably quirky characters, funny dialogue and Brussels sprouts all make for a very good, enjoyable horror movie. S**t for eternity is not what you'll get if you choose to watch it.