Apparently this movie is a cult favorite, but I was unfamiliar with it. Though I wish I had grown up watching it at sleepovers! The special effects are non-realistic by today's standards, but a lot of the effects and images they chose to employ were indeed very creative and impressive. To an extent, the VFX reminded me of Ray Harryhausen's work (Clash Of The Titans from 1981, The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad from 1973). And the effects are darned scary if you can accept them as realistic. The main character is played by a very young Stephen Dorff (Blade) and he accidentally opens a portal to Hell in his back yard. He tries to deal with the situation with his best friend, and his older sister is also a main character and several of her friends make appearances as well (one of which is a young Kelly Rowan who also played the mom in the series The OC).I like that they took the time to flesh out characters and their back stories more thoroughly than they had to (the best friend's home situation, for example, was not essential to the plot but it did improve things). There was a loving relationship between the brother and sister, but there was some bickering involved as well (though most of the bickering and name-calling was between the boys and the sister's friends). I like that the relationship was multi-dimensional like that. I really liked this movie and wish this was one I grew up with.
I'd say the ideal audience would be kids who are old enough to want to see scary and gross stuff (some of the monsters and wounds were indeed gross) but young enough that they are amused by the characters calling each other names. The main character was around 12, and I find that many movies tend to target an audience at or slightly below the age of the main character (if the main character is not an adult). Or if you're an adult like myself who likes to see different movies, I think this one was well done. On the other hand, if you dont' like movies starring kids or if you need current era realistic visual effects then you probably won't like The Gate.
Bruce Campell once at 3 whole bags of candy corn. Well to be more specific, one was standard candy corn, one was the kind with the chocolate base, and the third was the candy pumpkins. Those candy pumkins are good but very filling, so i dont know how he did that, and i propose that that one bag count as 2, thus bringing Bruce Campell's candy corn consumption up to 4 bags.
ReplyDeleteThat is a ton of sugar, but i guess thats why he is so sweet!