Customer Reviews

The Black Gate (Widescreen Edition)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Everytime I watch a bad low-budget film my admiration for guys like John Carpenter and Tobe Cunningham grows. Considering that many film makers have a larger budget than Carpenter had on Halloween it's quite disillusioning that they don't show 1/10th of the skill. This boring, sleep inducing mess was actually made in 1995, looks like it was made in 1975, and is just now being released on DVD in 2005. A woman named Rebecca lacey owns a bed & breakfast that is evidently haunted. She summons a ghost hunter (Out of the yellow pages I guess) named Scott Griffin (Jeff Rector) to investigate and he's accompanied by a skeptical writer Justin (George Saunders).

We're virtually given no backstory on any of these characters and one gets the feeling like you missed the first 15 minutes of the film they way you're tossed right into things. Right away Scott is led to the attic and busts open the floorboards to find some old, ornate box called the Asmodean that can open a gateway to hell. Rebecca explains she bought the house and everything in it including a room which had something that looked like an altar. Evidently that alone wasn't enough to dissuade her from buying the creepy dump. Soon bumbs in the night and voices are heard and Scott seems to suffer a kind of mental attack with strange visions while Justin is visited by a beautiful ghost who says they were lovers in another life. We learn that the old owner, Richard Locke, was some kind of satanist who murdered his wife for flirting with another man at a dinner party and then killed himself. The ghost visiting Justin is Locke's wife and he's trying to use Justin to return to our world and unleash "The Darkening".

The biggest problem with Black Gate is that the makers simply want us to accept everything no questions asked. It's because they can't tell us just what a "darkening" is or how Justin's relationship with the spirit will be used to free Locke from Hell. The acting is subpar throughought with Rector hamming it up and the rest basically sleepwalking through their parts. The special effects are amateurish at best and the film just looks cheap. I'm not sure if its due to a bad transfer or what but you do feel like your watchng an old film from the 1970's. A very dull and dry look.

WARNING: possible spoilers ahead

This whole movie is about a haunted Bed & Breakfast that is actually some kind of gateway to Hell. You know, come to think of it, I think I actually stayed there once. You can read my review of it on Travelocity. Sorry, the joke was there and I took it.

I read somewhere that Black Gate was originally called The Darkening and was made back in 1996. Now, if someone told me that it was made in 1986, I might say it was a decent effort. If it had been made in 1976, I would have said it was amazing. But since it was made in 1996, I can't really excuse the horrible CG that looks like it was done on somebody's Atari 500 game console. I can't really excuse the fact that the hero wears a ridiculous trenchcoat through the whole movie, and I can't excuse the flimsy plot.

I guess the owner of the B&B wants to get rid of the ghosts, because they're making all of her guests leave. In comes a pair of ghost hunters, a trenchcoat wearing priest and his sidekick. At some point, the sidekick winds up falling in love with one of the ghosts, which leaves the whole "saving the B&B" thing to Father Trenchcoat.

It's not really worth describing the story in greater detail. There's a lot of Father Trenchcoat trying his best to act like Max Von Sydow in the EXORCIST. He winds up being drawn into a portal which sends him to CG Hell. It's where all of the Bad CG goes to die, and Father Trenchcoat gets dumped right in the middle of it. He fights his way home and fires his agent for getting him put in this stupid movie to begin with.

This movie, although by no means a masterpiece, was a really great movie for a rainy afternoon. If you are a fan of 70's TV Scary movies, and like haunted houses, mortals in love with ghosts, evil books discovered under the floorboards of the attic, psychics, and moonlit cliff shots, then this is a movie worth seeing.

With BLACK GATE you get:
1. A ridiculous plot which makes little if any sense.
2. Horrible acting.
3. Lighting so inadequate you spend most of the film in darkness.
4. Really hokey special effects.
5. No scares or suspense.
A real time waster.
Nuff said!

I had the displeasure of seeing this movie about two years ago and unfortunately I have not been able to forget how bad it was. The effects are terrible, which is forgivable in a movie like this, but the acting was so bad that I think a band of wild chimpanzees could have given a comparable performance. One particularly memorable scene involves a male character sitting on a bed and feigning deep emotion as he strokes the cheek of a CG ghost. It may sound like it would be worth it to watch this for the amusement factor, but trust me - it's not.

Don't waste your time, money or brain cells by even inserting this movie into your DVD player. It's so bad that I couldn't even watch more then 15 minutes of it. I'm a huge horror movie fan and actually a lover of B movies too, but this was just sad.

And that is the tragedy of this movie. With a little tweaking, there could have been a strong, intelligent horror movie here. Instead, poor acting, bad editing, and so-so directing cuts this movie down at the knees.

A typical haunted house story is given a spin by the exorcist being haunted by his past, having a crush on the house owner, and the camera man connecting to his past in the most unlikely way. The plot sounded good. Sadly, it lost its way.

The special effects are not only excellent for a direct to DVD movie, they're better than in most big budget horror movies lately (Christina Ricci's Cursed comes to mind when I say this). The special effects are the only reason I'm giving it two stars instead of one.

The acting is wretched! I'm not sure if this is because of the actors, director, or editor, but it's just not a good movie, and over all there are far better low budget horror movies that deserve your time and trouble. Better yet, check out the Tales from the Cyrpt DVD sets out now for some horror perfection. Just do yourself a favor and avoid this movie.