Portal (Movie Review)

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

 WATCH PORTAL HERE

PLOT: When an amateur ghost-hunting team fails to find a haunted house for the season 1 finale, they steal a location from a rival program. When they arrive at the so-called haunted house, a demonic portal is inadvertently opened.

REVIEW: With a micro-budget that would normally ensure otherwise, longtime TV director and indie filmmaker Dean Alioto somehow manages to deliver a drolly entertaining and easy-to-follow, if baldly derivative, paranormal investigative yarn in PORTAL, currently available on all major digital platforms. While it isn’t particularly frightening where it wants and needs to be, the film still manages to benefit from its waggish sense of humor and economic storytelling. That is, the movie flies by at skimpy 70-odd minutes and remains amusing for most of the way due to the dynamic chemistry among its small handful of characters. Those who’ve roundly panned the film were probably victimized by false advertisement, as the film plays much better as an outright horror/comedy than billed as a horror/thriller. Alas, the movie ultimately feels too slight and inconsequential to leave much of a dent in your memory, but while you’re in the thick of it, it’s far more enjoyable than you might expect for a movie made so quickly and with such little resources. At the very least, the film proves Alioto is one to watch moving forward!

Steven (Ryan Merriman) leads a ragtag crew of amateurs who need to secure a location for the first season finale of their TV show Ghost Seekers. A hilarious interplay between the crew sets the humorous tone that will persist throughout. This includes Steven and his girlfriend, Cris (Jamie Tisdale), fellow couple Raz (Reinaldo Zavarce) and Jen (Najarra Townsend), as well as the wise-cracking chauffer, Mason (Myk Watford). After examining a dud of a location that will not suffice for a season finale, the crew seeks a new haunted house to investigate. They end up tricking a rival crew of the far more successful Ghost Trackers TV show, and cunningly secure one of their locations that remain off-limits due to its harrowing past. When Steve and his pals arrive at the Dalva House, they’re immediately warned to leave by Native American groundskeeper. Determined to capture some jaw-dropping footage for their fans, the Ghost Seekers crew persists.

After stumbling on a mysterious spiral marking on a stone outside the house, eerie phenomena begin to occur. Steven accidentally micturates on the marking, which prompts an arrow pointing toward the ground. The crew digs up box with an animal pelt with Native American writings scrawled on the back. Unwisely, Steven recites the incantation and summons a demon, rather than a ghost, which begins to target each member of the crew for possession. One of the things I dug about the flick, aside from its overt hilarity, is this Native American angle. The idea that tribes of the past summoned a demon to protect them from genocide is an original idea I’ve not seen before. With Native genocide, a thing of the past in the story, the demon, once summoned, has no specific enemy any longer, and thus goes after any living being. Of course, once Steven learns all of this from Fiona (Heather Langenkamp), whose family used to live in the Dalva House, he actually wants to continue filming for the TV Show. Cris, on the other hand, thinks the idea is ridiculous and wants all to head for the hills. Despite a bit of slapdash and haphazard conclusion, the movie remains entertaining all the way through.

Look, we say it all the time. A movie is only as good as the resources behind it. Admirably, PORTAL works around its glaring monetary deficiencies to remain a pleasurable experience, despite everything working against it. You can tell Alioto and crew didn’t have enough money for believable VFX, which does hamper the horror part of the proceedings a tad. We never see a ton of gore or graphic slaying, so the horror has to rely more on atmosphere, shadows, and a few feckless jump-scares. Frankly, without all of the aforementioned good – the humor, straight-forward storyline, crackling chemistry, and Native American subplot – the movie would receive a much lower grade. Indeed, not much about is all that scary. And yet, somehow, Alioto uses all of his experience (helming over 65 episodes of Watch Over Me) to keep the movie tight, focused, well-paced, and consistently entertaining.

All told, PORTAL probably won’t stay in your mind for too long after watching it, but it still sort of makes a worthy addition to the pantheon of low-budget ghost-hunter joints. It’s more fun than any of the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY movies, you can be sure of that much. Problem is, it’s no scarier. Given its lack of resources, the movie succeeds at almost everything it sets out to except for being genuinely terrifying. I get that this a major issue for a movie intent on frightening folks, but because of the solid screenplay, kinetic chemistry among the cast, ribbing sense of humor, and demonic Native American subplot, writer/director Dean Alioto proves he’s someone to keep an eye on moving forward.