Beyond the Gates: Two brothers play a deadly board game in exclusive clip

Beyond the Gates is the name of both the new horror movie from director Jackson Stewart and the lethal, fictional board game responsible for the film’s gory mayhem.

“The movie centers around these two estranged brothers who reunite to close down their missing father’s video store,” Jackson explained to EW on this week’s edition of Sirius XM show Entertainment Weirdly. “While they’re there, they happen upon this VCR board game that has something to do with his disappearance. It’s a little bit in the vein of the movies like The Gate and Phantasm, but done with adults. It’s firmly got its DNA rooted in the ’80s horror films that seem to be making a big comeback.”

Although Beyond the Gates is Stewart’s directorial debut, the former Supernatural scribe managed to fill his cast with faces who will be very familiar to horror fans. “The lead actors are Graham Skipper from Almost Human and The Mind’s Eye, Chase Williamson from John Dies at the End and SiREN, Brea Grant from Halloween II and Heroes, and Barbara Crampton from Re-Animator and We Are Still Here,” explained Stewart, who co-wrote Beyond the Gates with Jodorowsky’s Dune producer Stephen Scarlata. “Who else is in there? Matt Mercer from Contracted, Justin Welborn from The Signal and SiREN, and the great Jesse Merlin — he’s like a Christopher Lee, one of those stuffy British guys, even though he was born in California. Yeah, pretty much everyone you may have seen in a recent indie horror genre movie is in it, partially because it’s a small, incestuous circle we have out here [in Los Angeles], but also because I really love all these guys and wanted to put them in a movie together.”

Stewart also revealed that he has an idea for a Beyond the Gates sequel. “I’m actually in the process of writing that,” he said. “It would be a little bit more in the vein of these ’80s paranoia movies, like The Stuff and Society, with a little dash of In the Mouth of Madness thrown in there. They’re trying to stop this epidemic of Beyond the Gates board games from getting out into the world.”

Beyond the Gates arrives in theaters and on VOD Dec. 9. Following this Friday’s 7:30 p.m. screening of the film at LA’s Arena Cinelounge cinema, Stewart will be taking part in a Q&A moderated by Re-Animator director Stuart Gordon.

Watch the trailer for Beyond the Gates below and an exclusive clip featuring Skipper and Williamson above.