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The Gate

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Short Film Review: "The Gate", by bonzopoe [EN / ES]@bonzopoe1507d
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  1. The Gate Review, Slow Burning 80’s Cult Classic@triverse2552d

    I have heard about The Gate for a while now. Checked out reviews by people on YouTube, such as Minty Comedic Arts, and read reviews of the movie prior to watching it. Everything I checked out forgot to mention one major flaw of The Gate. The slow burn builds. We are talking over half of the movie before we see our first real ghoul. About two minutes past the halfway mark to be exact (I checked). With that said, I can still give you the TL;DR version of this review in one sentence. The_Gate_1987_movie_7.jpg Watch the first 10 minutes then skip to about 44 minutes in and don't look back.

    The family element is driven home here

    Glen is a twelve-year-old that is at that awkward age we all went through around this age. His parents are fine leaving him alone with his older sister, Alexandria (aka “Al”) in charge but Glen is not liking this new development. That is where we pick up in The Gate. Glen’s parents leave for a three-day trip and trust the family home, and Glen, in the hands of Al.

    Glen is a normal pre-teen who happens to be afflicted with nightmares. One nightmare involves a tree in his backyard and a treehouse that is struck by lightning while he is in it. The next day he discovers construction workers have cut the tree down and left an awfully intriguing to a 12-year-old, and his best friend, hole in its place.

    Glen gets Terry involved in investigating the hole only to discover a giant geode. While getting the geode out Glen gets cut and a small amount of blood falls on the ground. For those keeping track, this is detrimental to poor Glen.

    Al is throwing a party downstairs leaving Glen and Terry to their geode. Apparently, it left some strange writing on a notepad which of course is code for “break that bad boy open”. After opening the geode, they decide to read the writing out loud before going downstairs because nothing happens.

    The party is apparently boring and not much going on as one friend is trying to convince everyone about levitation. The “jock” guy sees Glen and calls him over to participate in the levitation exercise. This ends badly for Glen who ends up not only levitating but hitting a light and pulling another out of the wall before running out crying.

    That night Glen has another rather detailed dream involving his rooms walls stretching. Terry embraces an apparition that looks like his dead mother and it starts getting weird around this point. Unfortunately for Glen, Terry’s “mom” turned out to be Angus, the family pet, who was strangled to death in the hug.

    Terry discovers a heavy metal album he owns that features lyrics that he feels pertains to the hole in Glen’s backyard. Showing this to Glen who is obviously not believing it, Terry finally convinces his friend through displaying results. Now on the same page, Glen and Terry attempt to close the gate so demons cannot get through.

    It continues like this for over half the movie

    As mentioned already, you are in for a long, about 44-minute-long, slow burn build up. I am not saying what comes afterwards is all that easy to follow either as there are a lot of jump cuts. Things happen that have no real rhyme or reason to them, and it just adds to the confusion of the movie.

    The Gate is a good flick, if you are not sleepy and can focus on the events. If you cannot do either of those things, then you are going to have a hard time with this movie.

    It is hard not being able to follow suit with others and claim how great The Gate is. I wanted to like it; I really did. It is just so slow to build to anything worth getting excited over.

    Special effects right out of the 80’s

    The special effects are about on par with what you would expect from the 80’s. They are not perfect today, they weren’t perfect back then, but they are still campy and have that charm to them. For the most part, the demon activity is more weirdly funny than they are scary. That doesn’t mean you can sit your pre-teen nephews and nieces in front of this one without being prepared to fast forward a bit here and there. Best to view The Gate prior to any younger audience that may be interested in this pre-teen adventure seeing it. It is not blood that you must worry about, but it could cause some nightmares late at night.

    Carl’s Notes version of The Gate

    Here you go, if you are watching The Gate for the first time, just go ahead and fast forward through anything involving Al’s love interest (the brunette guy) unless he has Angus with him. All the time spent on him otherwise is not needed to understand the plot so let’s just cut him out. You can also skip the party scene where Glen is levitated. Once Glen and Terry start to leave the bedroom, just go ahead and skip till they are out of the house.

    Doing those two things should save you a good 15 minutes of pretty pointless viewing. This will speed up The Gate for you a little bit and probably make it a little more manageable as well.

    Grab The Gate on eBay today.

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