BEYOND THE GATES (2016)

Studio:       IFC Midnight
Director:    Jackson Stewart
Writer:       Jackson Stewart, Stephen Scarlata
Producer:  Jackson Stewart, Amanda Mortimer, Stephen Scarlata, Barbara Crampton, Ian Keiser, Jon Kondelik, Leigh Jones
Stars:     Graham Skipper, Chase Williamson, Brea Grant, Matt Mercer, Justin Welborn, Jesse Merlin, Sara Malakul Lane, Henry LeBlanc, Barbara Crampton

Review Score:

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Summary:

Two estranged brothers link their father’s mysterious disappearance to a cursed 1980s VCR board game.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Seven months after their father Robert Hardesty disappeared, estranged brothers Gordon and John reunite at the video store their father owned to pack up tapes and formally close the shop. Now a police officer, longtime friend Derek briefly pays a visit to the brothers at the store.

Gordon’s girlfriend Margot arrives in town to stay with Gordon at his father’s house while the brothers put affairs in order. Gordon and Margot have a tense encounter at a local bar when John introduces them to his criminal friend Hank.

Inside their father’s office at the store, Gordon and John find a vintage VCR board game called “Beyond the Gates.” The brothers play the accompanying VHS videocassette and become transfixed by Evelyn, the game’s mysterious hostess.

John brings the game to dinner with Gordon and Margot at the Hardesty home. The trio is shocked when Evelyn makes a reference on the tape to John and Gordon’s missing father.

Gordon notices a framed photo of Evelyn on the mantle. Thinking the tape might be a clue to Robert’s disappearance, the trio has Derek watch the tape. Gordon, John, and Margot realize something supernatural is happening when Derek sees only wavy static on the TV screen.

A handwritten note found in the game box leads the brothers to The Spiral Staircase, an occult antique store where Robert originally acquired the game. Shopkeeper Elric cryptically suggests that Gordon and John must continue playing the game by following Evelyn’s instructions to find four keys and go “beyond the gates.” John steals a sacrificial knife depicted in an illustration on one of the game cards.

Gordon and John resume the game and reveal a card called “The Drifter.” A clue on the game board leads them to the backyard where they dig up a voodoo doll. John cuts open the doll to retrieve a key inside. At the same time, Hank dies violently in a bar after confronting his girlfriend Dahlia. John is later horrified upon receiving news of Hank’s death, which is pinned on Dahlia as a jealousy murder.

The brothers place the key in its position on the board, which unlocks the house’s door to the basement. Downstairs, Gordon and John discover an ominous metal gate.

Gordon and John examine the remaining three cards corresponding to the other keys. “The Noble One” seemingly depicts Derek wielding a gun. Gordon recognizes Margot as “The Maiden” and insists she stop playing the game with them. Gordon then throws the game in the garbage.

The next day, the game reappears on the living room table. Margot pays a visit to Elric at The Spiral Staircase. Possessed, Derek comes to the house with a shotgun. While the brothers hide, Gordon finds a miniature head with a small key stuck in it. Gordon removes the key and Derek’s head explodes. A full-size key is found among Derek’s brain matter.

John and Margot have a private conversation about Gordon. Margot reveals that Gordon quit drinking after grabbing her too hard and injuring her wrist.

Placing the second key on the board unlocks the gate in the basement. When John touches the gate, a demonic hand comes forth to grab him. Later that night, the creature released by the gate emerges from under Gordon’s bed and attacks. John stabs it and Gordon caves in its head with a baseball bat.

John and Gordon find Margot in a trance in front of the gate in the basement. The brothers are able to restrain her while recovering the third key.

Evelyn tells John and Gordon that they are now able to go beyond the gates. There, they must kill their father’s poisoned heart in order to free all of the captured souls. John and Gordon enter the gate and emerge in a mirror world.

Gordon and John rescue Margot in the other realm and confront demonic versions of Derek and Hank. After killing Derek and Hank, the brothers confront a possessed incarnation of their father. Gordon uses the sacrificial knife to stab out Robert’s heart, which then turns into the fourth key. Robert returns to normal and thanks Gordon for freeing him before dying. When the final key is placed on the game board, Evelyn laughs and the brothers are returned to reality.

Gordon and Margot take their leave while John, now reconciled with his brother, stays behind to finish selling the house. At The Spiral Staircase, a customer asks for a recommendation. Elric produces the VCR board game and suggests he purchase “Beyond the Gates.”

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Review:

No one has seen Robert Hardesty in seven months.  It’s not unusual for eccentric widower Bob, a beleaguered video storeowner made obsolete by the digital revolution, to disappear for long lengths.  Except this time, he is presumed dead.

Bob’s two sons could barely contain their smiles when dad opened his store (Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee in North Hollywood making a cameo) in 1992.  Real life eventually did what it does however, and the brothers drifted in directions that left dad and the store, but mostly each other, decidedly in their pasts.

Gordon is the buttoned-up brother, preoccupied by mortgage payments and concerns that excessive drinking could harm his relationship with girlfriend Margot.  John is the bedhead-haired slacker side of the siblings, who dresses in shabby chic couture while palling around with ex-con buddy Hank.  With dad M.I.A., Gordon and John must now find a way to reconcile longstanding differences while setting family affairs in order.

What the brothers find instead is “Beyond the Gates,” a curious VCR board game hidden behind their father’s locked office door.  Into the player goes the accompanying VHS tape and both men are immediately entranced by Evelyn, the game’s mysterious “Mistress of the Dark” hostess.  It seems like a laughable lark at first, yet when the decades-old videocassette mentions the Hardesty family’s vanished patriarch, Gordon and John realize “Beyond the Gates” is no mere nostalgia novelty (neither is the movie).  They have stepped into a dark shadow of supernatural terror from which their only escape is completing the cursed game.

If your age was in single digits as a budding horror fan at some point during the 1980s, it’s a sure bet that “Beyond the Gates” is a movie made for you by passionate genre fans just like you.  With neon-colored sights and spookily synthesized sounds, the entire tone of “Beyond the Gates” is steeped in cinematic style from that heyday.  More than that, the content of the film speaks to embodying and honoring an era when endless aisles of VHS tapes inspired an imagination so hungry for horror, it was often oblivious to cheesiness.

That reference to cheesiness does not apply to this movie.  IMDB misleadingly offers “comedy” as one of three classifications for “Beyond the Gates.”  While the sudden absurdity of an exploding head after several scenes of slow-build suspense may inspire a horrified chuckle, be advised that “Beyond the Gates” is not in business to be funny, only frighteningly fun.

Director Jackson Stewart’s debut feature neither disrespects throwback tastes nor loses itself in blind homage to its sleeve-worn influences.  “Beyond the Gates” is not pastiche, parody, or self-aware sendup.  Instead, it is a distinctly contemporary horror film featuring respectfully retro flavor, with flavor being the keyword.  By embracing its straightforward intent to satisfy longtime genre fans on multiple levels, the simple style of “Beyond the Gates” makes for an entertainingly eerie nightmare chiller.

Cast and crew credits read like an extensive encyclopedia of the L.A.-based horror circuit, with family tree limbs poking into every corner of genre filmdom.  Actors include Sara Malakul Lane (“Sun Choke”), Justin Welborn (“V/H/S: Viral”), Matt Mercer (“Contracted”), Graham Skipper (“The Mind’s Eye”), and Brea Grant (too many titles to choose from).  The majority of these inclusions are due to everyone running in similar circles, but unlike many indie film “family” affairs, casting choices here fully fit the person.

Since resurging in genre movie appearances, productions eagerly seek to include Barbara Crampton in their casts regardless of how fitting the proposed role might be.  Crampton appears only on a television screen in “Beyond the Gates,” yet the symbiotic relationship of her onscreen role as Evelyn to her fan-favorite horror icon status offscreen places her perfectly as a 1980s haunted horror hostess.

Chase Williamson has never been better as underachieving brother John.  Uptight brother Gordon is designed to be dour, which doesn’t make for the most electrifying personality.  Williamson swings that balance back toward engaging by being organically likable with the natural charm and subtly sympathetic struggle he puts into his performance.

Weary eyelids can be a byproduct of the film’s slow start.  “Beyond the Gates” is uncomplicated, which leaves a downscaled production vulnerable to stagnant scenes that have nowhere but calm character conversations to siphon minimal energy from.  Keep confidence in where the feel, fiction, and fun factor are heading and patience pays off with some spectacular practical FX punctuation marks and supernatural thrills.  Fans of Lucio Fulci, direct-to-video midnight movies, or terror touchstones striking fond fright film memories, your wish for “just one more” movie in a similar vein has been granted.  “Beyond the Gates” is made with precisely you in mind.

NOTE: There is a brief post-credits scene.

Review Score:  85

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