A strong performance from Jacqueline McKenzie leads The Gateway, an Australian indie sci-fi thriller that boasts impressive dramatic depth as well as innovative sci-fi.

Don’t let the never-ending cascade of Australian art house dramas fool you: Aussies make fine genre movies. Perhaps most unheralded is the sci-fi genre, in which classics such as the Mad Max trilogy and Dark City reside. The budgets may be small, yet the innovation and “can do” attitude is most certainly there.

Enter The Gateway, the fourth film by writer/director John V. Soto, who has made a career going against convention and creating genre movies within an industry that usually balks at such a prospect. Yet persist Soto has done, and with The Gateway the Western Australian filmmaker has delivered his best film yet, a sci-fi thriller that pulls off presenting big ideas on a small budget, with plenty of pointed drama adding stakes to a dimension hopping narrative.

Jacqueline McKenzie star as Jane Chandler, a particle physicist who discovers a means for inter-dimensional travel. When her husband Matt (Myles Pollard) is killed in a tragic accident, an inconsolable Jane risks her life to travel to another dimension to find his counterpart. Yet when she brings this alternate hubby to her world, she places herself and her family in jeopardy.

This melding of Hitchcockian thriller and sci-fi smarts works very well due to the strong performances of its cast. McKenzie does a great job in portraying the desperate mindset of a grief-stricken wife, mother and scientist, whose emotional turmoil overcomes her intelligent mind. Logic gives way to longing, resulting in a character who must make amends for a desperate act. Pollard is great as well in an impressive double turn, playing both personable family man and snarling sociopath to stellar results.

The nature of an “indie” sci-fi can be tricky to pull-off, mostly because it must rely on its smarts and storytelling to make up for the lack of a big budget and all that comes with it (large scale VFX, etc). The Gateway successfully implements the right amount of intelligent sci-fi that is intriguing and does not get bogged down in science tech talk. Any VFX featured is suitably modest due to the films budget, yet good enough to not cause too much of a distraction.

Soto has made it his career ambition to deliver quality genre fare to Australian audiences, and The Gateway is just that. It does not boast the large-scale spectacle of Hollywood contemporaries. Yet what it lacks in visual bombast, it makes up for in character and sci-fi smarts.