"From the team that brought you V/H/S" says the press release for PORTAL (aka DOORS in the US) but don't let that necessarily put you off. For a start PORTAL is a different genre (SF) and it has different writers and directors but you will have guessed from those plurals that, like V/H/S, PORTAL does follow the anthology route. At least, sort of.
Bizarre, huge alien 'doors' begin to appear all over the earth. Many of them resemble huge collections of iron filings pulled into patterns by magnets, some of them pulsate and a few of them talk. Through three stories linked by the narration of a radio talk show host who features along with another character to round everything off we learn a little bit about why the doors are here and what they want.
The first story is about the appearance of a door in a school. The second is set sometime later and details the attempts of explorers to pass through a door and explore the strange universe found on the other side. The third is about a man who discovers a door in a forest and finds he can communicate with it. The stories become more interesting as they go along, with the second boasting at least one image of 'beautiful horror' (a man suffocates as his breather mask fills with rose petals) and a strong sense that the director (Saman Kesh) wanted to do something similar to Alex Garland and Jeff Vandermeer's ANNIHILATION (2018), while the third is simultaneously touching and tinged with ominous portent.
Ultimately only a little of why what has been happening is explained and at points the film skates dangerously close to the edge of 'this is just short films glued together to make a fix-up movie'. However if you're inclined for a bit of slow burn weird SF that feels dreamlike in parts and nightmarish in others PORTAL is certainly worth a look.
PORTAL is out Digital and DVD from Signature Entertainment on Monday 19th April 2021
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