Thursday, May 26, 2011

The Gate





So what do you get when you cross baby Stephen Dorf, a dead dog, and Ray Harryhausen?


Give up yet?

The answer is the movie that scared me most as a child, and by "The most as a child" I mean, I've never been so fucking scared about a movie in my life! Looking back on it I'm not sure why I was so scared by the gate, although there is still a lot of creepy stuff, I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would. It didn't hold up in the scary department but I was actually really surprised, it was a lot of fun, the effects were great, the acting was a little terrible, but it was an 80's horror movie so you can't expect much.

The movie stars a 12 year old Stephen Dorff, and time seems to actually HURT his acting talent. Don't' get me wrong he was by no means GOOD in this movie, but he was like 12 years old it was excusable. Now, he's like almost 40 and I don't get why he always almost has a career. Back to the movie starring Baby Stephen Dorff, as Glenn. Glenn's dad just had the lawn freshly sodded and had a tree chopped down in the back. This tree happened to be the home of Glenn's tree house, the ruins now lay beside the stump of the tree that was torn down. When the workers tear out the stump they find a geode, which is like a rock with crystals in it. Glenn shows his friend Terry who tells him if they can find a BIG one then they'll be rich. so they roll up the lawn dig a giant hole which actually turns out to be a gate to hell, and sadly Glenn and Terry accidentally do the EXACT process to open said gate, up to sacrificing something to the demons. After Terry goes home he decides to listen to some strange death metal, that talks about the same demons Terry and Glenn just happen to accidentally summon. These things happen.

What ensues is a fun little adventure, similar to "Goonies" or "The Monster Squad" not nearly as good as either of those, but a fun adventure about kids thrown in to something that they can't possibly handle. Does it do everything right? definitely not, the special effects are good but the story for the most part moves really slow towards the beginning, the acting is terrible being that the movie is entirely children and 1 of the is Stephen Dorff and for obvious reasons none of them did much after this, there is a bit of "Power of Love" ending to it, but if you're looking for some fun effects, a little bit of a scare, and an overall good time you won't be disappointed by this.

Now, how much sleep will I lose?

2 comments:

Jim said...

This was on our shortlist of movies to watch for Halloween last October, but as happens every year, it wound up being one of the many we didn't get around to. Lexi saw it when she was little, and it scared her, but I've never seen it, and as a fan of 80's kids movies, I probably should.

Resmo112 said...

it was fun and it's well worth the rental. It gets slow at times but the effects hold up well. And I can understand why Lexi was afraid of it, seriously, I told my brother I was watching it and his response was just "Too scared" it scared the crap outta all of us.