A Month of Horror: The Gate

The Gate:

Wow, I have such fond memories of this movie. I remember being at school one day and overhearing my friends talking about this scary movie called "The Gate" and how awesome it was. I was so intrigued that I walked all the way to Network Video and rented the VHS that day and watched it that night by myself in my parents room.

Now you have to remember that my parents were pretty laid back when I was growing up about movies that I was able to watch, and that included horror movies. In fact, Network Video had a note from my parents saying that I was able to rent horror movies and Rated R movies.

So I got home and after dinner I locked myself away and put the movie in. Up to this point I had seen Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Those were both pretty scary, but nothing too bad.

I really enjoy this movie, it is definitely an 80's throwback in every way. The hair styles, the clothing, the shoes, all scream 1980's. There is one thing that is ageless though throughout the movie and that is the story. It preys on the fears of kids. The unknown and unexplained, all topped off with an annoying older sister and no parents around.

The movie focuses on a family, specificaly a son and daughter that are home alone for an extended weekend. Over night, a tree gets struck by lightning, and a series of events occurs following the lightning that leads to the opening of a gate to another world in their own backyard. The demons coming from the gate need to make two human sacrifices so that they can make hell on earth.

Now one of the cool things about this movie is seeing Stephen Dorff as a young kid. It is almost hard to recognize him buried in 80's style hair and clothes, but it is definitely him. This movie does a great job of setting up the story and the character development. The FX are not the greatest, but definitely what you would expect from a pre-CGI era of movie making.

This movie is rather fun to watch, and I would think that kids over the age of 8 would probably be able to watch it, but they definitely will stand a chance of getting pretty scared.

Verdict: Definitely a must watch, for a family horror movie. With the new release of this finally on DVD, I would say it is a must own.