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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
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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 ...
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