31 Nights Review: BEYOND THE GATES

Night Eight rolled up and I decided to find something unseen on Shudder. A few synopses later I chose this for the premise: two brothers meet up to deal with the estate of their father, starting with the video shop he ran while drinking through his guilt over his wife's death. As they go through the old stock and we meet some more of the cast, they find an old fashioned board game plus video in the locked office. Putting it on they get freaked out but they're intrigued: it might hold a clue to their father's disappearance and it looks neat, anyway so they take it home. The game binds them into playing it which will lead to them going to where the title says they will.

This is the kind of thing that people who are snobs about horror claim to let through: well produced, character development, considered plot and credible performances. I know, such people still think that horror movies are all hockey masks and teenage death-sex but they will all claim to hold genre films to values that are often irrelevant to them. That said, put to the test I don't think any such people (and I know a fair few personally) would get along well with this. Why? Well, it's like when someone who thinks they are witty hears a pun and calls it a bad pun. If you ask them for an example of what they think is a good pun they will often just dismiss it with: all puns are bad. Really? So, they've never read any Shakespeare or James Joyce or ... any novelist in or out of an airport newsagency who cares about delighting their readership. But I digress. 

The reason such folk won't get on with this is that it takes its time to get to where its going. We get to know these characters with nuanced performance supported by solid writing. Everything required of a creditable drama is on screen. Only at the very end (and I mean the final ten minutes) does it break out into what might be described as generic action and in those moments it does falter as they feel more perfunctory after all the world building of most of the film. The story needs it but it feels too sudden and lacks the power it might have had with more construction. This is why horror fans might find it lacking; they'll want the game tighter and faster. But while I am as subject to consumerist itching as any movie goer I let this pass as I was so impressed at the immersion I was offered. I felt the dread and dominance of the face on the television screen (Reanimator's Barbara Crampton) whenever they were in the room and then wherever they were. It's the world of it that's creepy, not the Ghost Ride action at the end.

If you do give this one a click, watch with patience and stay until after all the credits. You'll want to ask your tv a question. Out loud. But you won't.