Review – The Gate

This might have been a considerably better movie if it hadn’t been so darned juvenile. The basic plot – gate to hell opens, protagonists must shut it in order to save the world – is a little trite, especially considering the location of this fabled gate is a back yard somewhere in suburbia. On the other hand, there are some nice Lovecraftian touches here and there, and some of the effects are visually interesting despite being a bit on the cheap side. What really spoils it is the decision to make just about all the characters in the movie teens and pre-teens. While that alone might not have sunk it, the result of the kiddie casting is a considerable dumbing- and toning-down of the violence and scary stuff. It didn’t exactly help that at least part of the plot depended on the death of the family’s pet dog, and the monsters themselves were for the most part just a little too cute to inspire much beyond sympathy for their plight. To top it all off, who would ever have thought that of all the young actors in this movie the one who would go on to have a career was little Stephen Dorff, who plays the protagonist. Mildly amusing