Portal

USA 2008
produced by
Suzanne Lyons, Kate Robbins for Wind Chill Films, Maricopa Films, Belvedere Entertainment
directed by Geoffrey Schaaf
starring Chris Conrad, Alexander Martin, Kevin Dobson, Katherine Hawkes, Brock Kelly, Peter Lucas, Mary Stein, Angell Conwell, Ines Dali, Merik Tadros, Jessica Barth, Josh Adamson, Jon Kellam, Jan Anderson, Mike Kimmel, Sarah McGuire, Jessa Zarubica, Tamara Zook, Michael Tarzian, San'D Marshall, Kimberley Bliquez, Laurie Foxx
written by George Blumetti, Maurice Kelly, music by Vincent Gillioz, special effects by Natalia Senina

review by
Mike Haberfelner

Having gotten lost in the fog, Hooke (Chris Conrad) and Gibbs (Aelxander Martin) find abode at a cheap motel ... where they apparently sleep until the next evening. That night, they leave, get lost in the fog ... and find abode in the very same cheap motel - and Gibbs seems to even have forgotten everything about last night. Thing is, Hooke hasn't, and he soon finds out everybody here seems to relive the same night every night ... but then some people just disappear and others enter the story. Hooke also finds out that he and Gibbs haven't spent just a couple of days in the motel but half a year, reliving the same scene night after night - and actually the hotel owner Benedict (Kevin Dobson) and his servants (Katherine Hawkes, Brock Kelly) are witches who need the guests of the motel as studs and breeding machines for the son of Satan. After a while, Hooke even finds out he has come here with his fiancée Kim (Jessica Barth) he has long forgotten, and everybody has been made to forget by drugged food - food he has refused to eat the last few days ...

Eventually, Hooke finds and frees Kim - who's by now highly pregnant with the possible son of Satan - and the two make it out of the motel's special dimension by the only truck that can ... but then Hooke returns and tries to free all the others - with only limited success, since Benedict and his goons kill most of them before Hooke can even get close to them, but then Benedict himself is slaughtered by several of the women he had impregnated ...

In the end, Hooke and Kim manage to reach a hospital where she bears her child ... the son of Satan, one wonders.

Maybe this film is best described as the dark side of Groundhog Day - a mean film about a man reliving the same day over and over ... but rest assured, the similarities between the two films end here. Portal is actually an enjoyable little shocker that is based on an inspired script, and it (successfully) tries to convince more on behalf of its inspired if intentionally confusing narrative than a firework of special effects or gallons of gore. Sure, not everything in this film makes perfect sense, but on the other hand, neither do nightmares, and yet they frighten you ...

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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