Beyond the Gates

I'm getting good at this, evening on my own and I actually made an effort to sit down and watch a horror movie.  Dear lord, I took forever to choose a movie to watch, I went in with an open mind, and of course, when I went to think about what to watch or what I wanted to watch, that same open mind of mine went blank. Damn you.  I turned to the ever useful Google, and just basically Googled 'underrated horror movies of 2016/2017'.  And hello lists.  I always feel that sometimes the movies you haven't heard of, like underrated ones, can be the most enjoyable, such as Tucker and Dale Vs Evil and Stitches.  So I went through numerous articles, and came across Beyond the Gates: 'Two estranged brothers reunite at their missing father's video store and find a VCR board game dubbed 'Beyond The Gates' that holds a connection to their father's disappearance.'  - doesn't it sound great?!

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Beyond the Gates is very very 80s-ish.  Like maybe even more so than Stranger Things, and maybe more so if Stranger Things had a love child with It Follows with a bit of The Guest thrown in.  The opening credits, my gosh, I wasn't alive in the 80s, but I have seen a lot of it, thanks to my parents, and it is literally like it is plucked right out of it.  Oh, and The Goldberg's... The Goldberg's helped with teaching me about the 80s too, just a little bit...
The intro is great to be fair, like it's all pink and blue and purple, all neons must I add, and the music is just as if the 80s has pooped it all out.  As you can guess, it's super 80s, if you hadn't already guessed...  From the help of the intro, I was into this film even more than I was from just the story - I loved the idea of the story to be fair, I was so excited, like thrilled.

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Beyond the Gates kept me thrilled for a while, it started so well, I loved the story and I love the board games they used - I have one, but obviously it's a DVD one, so I was fully into it.  Even though, the girlfriend had no idea what a 'VHS boardgame was', that's what they called it and she literally could not work out what it was...  I wasn't even born when they were around and I could work it out...
The film started out well, and it was seriously creepy, starting with the lady who was in the TV, she just says some mystic thing and then just stares, literally just stares and only the people playing can see her.  The film also goes on the idea of what you can't see is scarier, (THANK GOD.), waking up in the middle of the night over nothing, knocks at the door, and just scary shadows. 

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All of that is pretty much the first half of the film, the second half is more action, which is sadly where I kind of lost it I guess.  It just lost it's creepiness, the gore was good, very good, heads exploding and blood everywhere, but it went more into action than horror at the end.  Think of Poltergeist, but without the scariness, and with more bright colours and ghosts, that was pretty much the end.
It was still enjoyable, I just thought it was really creepy and it kind of lost it.  Still was a good film and a great story, but I found it creepy, which is a big thing for me, and it went more down the action genre by the end of it.  Still see it though - you won't regret it.