“The Gate” Review

I’d never seen “The Gate.” It was one of the few horror movies a childhood friend of mine had seen, so he talked about it all the time. But it was never on my radar. I mean, it’s PG-13. We all know how I feel about horror movies rated PG-13.

But last night the New Beverly Cinema in Hollywood had a midnight showing of the film. I decided at the very last minute to go. I hadn’t been to that theater in 5 years. Back in ‘03, I’d gone to see a god-awful double bill of “I Drink Your Blood” and something probably equally wretched. I’d only made it through the first third of “I Drink Your Blood” before walking out due to its overwhelming badness. At any rate, for years I was leery of the programming at the New Beverly. I kept reading about these great screenings there, but I remained gunshy about going back.

Finally, I decided to man-up and revisit the theater. “The Gate” seemed like as good a movie as any to see there.

I’d done very little recon before arriving at the theater. It wasn’t until I got there and saw the poster that I realized that Stephen Dorff — Deacon Frost from the first “Blade” movie! — is in it. Then noticed Tibor Takacs had directed the film. Yes, the Tibor Takacs! I’m actually familiar with another film of his, “Mega Snake,” as a former co-worker of mine was a writer on that gem.

Takacs and the writer of “The Gate,” Michael Nankin, were in attendance last night and did a Q&A before the film began. Indeed, people in the audience had some softball questions about the film’s production. We all found it quite humorous that the film had opened opposite the notorious Warren Beatty/Dustin Hoffman bomb “Ishtar” and trounced it at the box office.

That being said, “The Gate” isn’t a great film, either. I think it works as a nightmare generator for its target audience — adolescents — but the story doesn’t really make a whole hell of a lot of sense. Still, I didn’t walk out, partly because I just wanted to see how much more bizarre it would get.

In the film, a dead tree is removed from the backyard of a young boy named Glen (Dorff). He and his friend Terry (Louis Tripp) begin digging around in the hole left by the tree stump and find jewels or something. A whole bunch of moths fly out of the hole. Glen’s sister, Alexandra, throws a party after their parents go out of town for a long weekend. The drunken high school kids make Glen levitate and he breaks a lamp. Terry has a dream that his late mother comes back to life, but she turns out to be Glen’s dog, who’s dead for some reason. Glen gets over the loss of his beloved pet in a record amount of time (”He was old.”), so he, Terry and Alexandra can fight little demons who’ve crawled out of the hole and have something to do with the lyrics in a heavy metal song Terry likes.

It gets weirder.

I guess I sort of liked the idea that none of the characters in the movie ever fully understood what was going on. Movies such as these usually have some resident expert who can provide gobs of exposition and clear up the confusion to some degree. “The Gate” doesn’t bother. In their desperation, the kids simply throw a bible in the hole, hoping that’ll do the trick. It doesn’t, unfortunately.

The movie does have that creepy vibe of a bad dream you had when you were a kid. It’s best to approach the film from that perspective. Or you could be cynical and say the filmmakers are hacks who had no business making a movie in the first place. Still, it outgrossed “Ishtar.” There’s something to be said for that.

-Brad Lohan

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