The industrial products of Western cinema do not distance enough from bad movies made in Los Angeles and copy their manias, even though they tell stories that are not only unusual, but better than all the horror clunkers produced in California. Apart from my usual complaint about the abusive use of sound effects and music, «Gateway» is a good first horror feature by Irishman Niall Owens, with a very strange and ingenious premise: a group of marijuana suppliers (who bear little resemblance to marijuana growers who consume it at the same time) is looking for a safe place where they can sow, care for and harvest the "holy weed".
However, each one has a tragedy behind that is a load too heavy for them to carry. They are typical characters of the marijuana subculture and (disorganized) crime, immersed in an unhappy intrigue that contains some elements that we already know from other horror movies: settling of scores inside a haunted house, where creditors of life, ghosts in search of vindication and pale entities that control the space manifest themselves and interact with the living with dire consequences.
Everything comes to a fair and consistent end, thanks to the images created by Owens and his cinematographer Ger Murphy, which are sinister enough to unsettle us, even though it all happens in a day in broad daylight: the house is sunny, and the exteriors are bright. However, the filmmakers were not confident enough to minimize the manipulative sound and omnipresent musical score. This said aside, it is a highly recommended film, especially for those who like the genre... with a twist.