Gateway

 Mike (Tim Creed) is part of a petty gang of criminals - pot dealers who squat in abandoned houses to grow their produce. He's haunted by the memory of a mysterious woman (Fiona Hardy) as the film accompanies him during a day out running deals, talking to an enforcer and various people higher up in the underworld pecking order, and getting a lead on a house they may be able to use to grow their next batch of weed.

 And the house seems well suited for their ends. Except that while they're scoping it out, they discover a locked room - and when that door is opened, bad things happen.

 Gateway is full of lurid details; Even while it's mostly about low-level criminals going around their day-to-day business, setting up their next job, it manages to cram in a torture victim and a few colourful characters. Later there are  various deaths, a very bizarre (and un-sexy) sex scene, plus a number of mysteries to unravel.

 But all of it is handled in the most unsensational way possible. The film is, I think, first and foremost an exercise in rigidly controlled tone. Stark characters, their stoic expressions frequently breaking into open grief, are framed against starker skies. There's no music, just silence - or else a carefully deployed atonal drone or sedate electronic cacophony; the sound design is excellent. The dialog, whether it's dealing with the realities of drug dealing or venting interpersonal grudges, is sparse, clipped, elliptical, as are the editing schemes for many of the scenes. The camera work is elegant, alternating between static shots and purposeful, precise movement where needed. The supernatural mystery at the heart of the movie makes little sense and has no interest in explaining itself, an enigma wrapped in an unassuming surrealist shroud.

 This is a willfully impenetrable film, a slow-burn that remains obstinately sedate and oblique even when things pick up and the bodies start piling up at an admirable pace in the back half. Writer/director Niall Owens and cinematographer Ger Murphy carefully build atmosphere until it's almost asphyxiating; It's a low-budget marvel that's low on horror and high on dread.
 I rather like it, but it's a bastard hard film to recommend.