If you’ve ever stared at your bathroom wall and thought, “What if this tile is hiding a portal to a damp, Lovecraftian nightmare?” — congratulations, you’re ready for The Gateway (also known as Curtains), Jaron Henrie-McCrea’s 2015 horror oddity about activism, guilt, and the supernatural hazards of modern plumbing.
It’s a weird, low-budget gem that manages to turn one of life’s most mundane frustrations — missing shower curtains — into an existential crisis. It’s creepy, it’s funny, and it’s so bizarrely earnest that you almost believe this is how the apocalypse begins: not with fire or brimstone, but with mildew and regret.
1. Danni the Whale Warrior
Our protagonist, Danni (played with delightfully deadpan anxiety by Danni Smith), is an ex-hospice nurse turned whale conservation activist. You can already tell she’s been through it. She quits her job, moves into a suspiciously cheap apartment, and joins a protest group called Whale Savers — because nothing says “fresh start” like standing in the cold yelling at fishermen.
Unfortunately, her new apartment is less “eco-conscious” and more “cosmic nightmare.” One night, Danni notices something strange: her shower curtains keep disappearing. Not “my landlord is stealing my stuff” disappearing, but “interdimensional vortex in my bathroom wall” disappearing. You know, the kind of problem you can’t call maintenance about.
Rather than move out like a normal person, Danni decides to film it — because apparently curiosity is stronger than self-preservation.
2. The Bathroom Becomes the Universe’s Worst Airbnb
After setting up a camera, Danni discovers the impossible truth: her shower curtains are being sucked into a glowing portal in her tiled wall. This is where most people would burn the apartment down and flee the state, but Danni does what all horror protagonists do best — she doubles down on the worst possible decision.
With the help of her friend Tim (Tim Lueke, whose performance screams “guy who still uses Reddit unironically”), she puts her phone number on the next curtain and lets it vanish into the unknown. Because nothing says science like sending your personal info into the void.
Surprisingly, they get a call. It’s from a drifter named Willy (Gregory Konow), who claims the curtain appeared in a creek near Poughkeepsie, New York — a town where, let’s be honest, we all expected a supernatural shower portal to open someday.
3. Enter Willy, a Man Who Should Not Be Trusted
Willy offers to take Danni and Tim to the site where he found the curtain. Things go south faster than a climate march in hurricane season. Willy starts huffing paint — because it’s 2015 and we still haven’t outlawed “bad life choices” — and transforms into his violent alter ego, Frankie.
The resulting fight scene feels like a public service announcement about why you should never road-trip with strangers from Craigslist. Danni and Tim escape, shaken but alive, which in this movie counts as a major victory.
4. The Pale Man Appears (And He’s a Real Party Pooper)
Back at home, Danni encounters The Pale Man (Martin Monahan), a sinister figure who looks like the offspring of Nosferatu and a tax auditor. He brands her hand with a mysterious symbol, warns her to stop putting up shower curtains,and then vanishes — the horror equivalent of a passive-aggressive note from your landlord.
Naturally, Danni ignores him immediately. She rips open the wall and discovers a bizarre map behind the tiles — because in horror films, curiosity doesn’t just kill the cat; it drags it through an interdimensional wormhole first.
Every time she hangs a new curtain, sections of the map start glowing. Somewhere, The Pale Man facepalms.
5. Dead Relatives, Glowing Maps, and Bad Decisions
Danni’s obsession deepens when she discovers her uncle Gus (Rick Zahn) dead, branded with the same mark that now decorates her hand. It’s at this point the audience collectively realizes: maybe the Pale Man had a point.
Danni and Tim keep experimenting, treating this eldritch phenomenon like a DIY science fair project for Satan. Their “research” eventually leads them back to the woods near Poughkeepsie — because all evil portals lead to upstate New York, apparently.
6. Monsters, Rednecks, and Cosmic Plumbing Problems
In the woods, Danni finds one of her curtains fluttering in the breeze, wrapped around a grotesque creature that looks like a cross between a drowned walrus and a tax audit. The monster gives chase, and Danni is saved by none other than The Pale Man, who reappears — this time flanked by a crew of shotgun-toting yokels.
Turns out, these guys monitor the portal to kill whatever slimy nightmares come through. It’s like Ghostbusters meets Duck Dynasty.
They inform Danni that her curtain experiments have basically turned her shower into a cosmic open door policy, and now she’s responsible for burying every creature that crawls out. It’s a perfect metaphor for every activist who accidentally makes things worse while trying to help.
Before they can kill her for her “sins against good plumbing,” another monster attacks. Chaos ensues, the yokels die, and Danni finally kills the creature herself — with all the exhausted determination of someone unclogging their drain after a long day.
7. The Gut Punch Twist
Just when you think things can’t get more tragic, Danni discovers that the monster she killed was actually Tim — her loyal, slightly annoying friend who went through the portal to save her.
It’s a brutal moment, equal parts horror and heartbreak. And because this movie is a black comedy at its core, Danni’s reaction isn’t to mourn or move on. No, she decides the best course of action is to turn herself into a monster too.
She wraps herself in a curtain and willingly steps into the portal, proving that curiosity, guilt, and eco-activism all share one fatal flaw: zero self-control.
8. Whale Savers… and Souls
In a final gut-laugh twist, the film closes with a tabloid headline declaring that a “Sea Monster” has slaughtered the crew of a whaling ship — the very same whaling ship Danni and Tim protested at the beginning.
It’s poetic justice with a dash of environmental irony: Danni has literally become the monster she fought to protect. Greenpeace, but make it body horror.
9. Why It Works (When It Absolutely Shouldn’t)
The Gateway shouldn’t work. It’s about disappearing shower curtains, for God’s sake. But Jaron Henrie-McCrea directs it with such odd sincerity that the absurdity becomes part of the charm.
The humor is bone-dry, the scares are practical, and the acting — particularly Danni Smith’s — balances horror and absurdity perfectly. She plays Danni like someone teetering between activism and existential meltdown, which, let’s face it, describes half of us in the 2010s.
The movie’s low budget actually enhances the atmosphere. The practical effects are grimy and handmade, like Evil Dead’s weirder cousin. The monsters look tactile and disgusting — and somehow, they fit right into a world where the line between activism and obsession blurs faster than a fogged-up mirror.
10. A Lovecraftian Comedy About Guilt, Grout, and Good Intentions
What makes The Gateway memorable isn’t just its bizarre premise but its bleak sense of humor. It’s a story about trying to do good and accidentally summoning evil — a metaphor for the modern world if there ever was one.
It’s not your standard horror flick about survival; it’s about consequence. Danni’s descent into madness feels both tragic and inevitable, like a Kafka story set in an apartment that smells faintly of bleach and despair.
And that final twist — that her transformation leads to the destruction of a whaling ship — is the kind of dark punchline Lovecraft himself might have written if he’d ever watched Whale Wars.
Final Thoughts: Curtain Call for Sanity
The Gateway is a weird, wonderful little film that proves you don’t need a big budget to make something unforgettable — just a wild idea, some fake blood, and a sense of humor blacker than your bathtub grout.
It’s part horror, part satire, and all madness. It takes the absurd seriously and turns a household nuisance into cosmic doom.
Rating: 8.5/10 — A curtain you can’t look away from. Come for the monsters, stay for the existential plumbing issues, and leave with a healthy fear of your own bathroom.
