Set on one of those remote Scottish islands populated entirely by English people, Devil’s Gate follows Rachel (Laura Fraser), a perpetually angry and entirely unsympathetic former resident who left for the mainland to find her mother, but is drawn back when told – falsely – that her father (Tom Bell) is dying after an accident. On arrival, she is perused by her aggressive childhood boyfriend Rafe (Callum Blue) and becomes involved with visiting city boy Matt (Luke Aikman), and the rest of the film jumps between this unlikely and unappealing love triangle and Rachel’s search for the truth about what happened to her mother – the final revelation coming as no surprise to anyone who has seen a film before.

Stuart St Paul’s film feels more like a worthy TV drama than a movie – ponderous, sluggish and with characters that are not as interesting as he wants you to believe. Rafe struts around fuelled on testosterone while Matt just seems gormless – it’s no wonder that Rachel isn’t interested in either of them. Then again, she’s so thoroughly sour-faced and unpleasant throughout the whole thing that you wonder why anyone would want her around. Meanwhile, Tom Bell communicates mostly in incoherent mumbles, and a mountain man straight out of The Hills Have Eyes – or more likely Don’t Go In The Woods – crops up for no reason other than to be an under-developed red herring.

I suspect that St Paul thinks Devil’s Gate is an emotionally wrenching piece, and he certainly goes all out to telegraph how tragic it all is, with a soundtrack of plaintive ballads – when REM’s Everybody Hurts plays as Rachel curls up in her childhood bedroom, you can’t help but groan at the labouring of the point. The problem is that in order to have an emotional impact on the viewer, the characters need to be people we can create to and sympathise with. Here, our lead is so unappealing that it’s honestly quite hard to give a damn about her.

Ultimately, St Paul fails to take advantage of the claustrophobic atmosphere of an enclosed community that is central to so many great horror films; instead, he’s cooked up a fairly insipid thriller that fails to deliver.

DAVID FLINT

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