One of the benefits of checking out all kinds of movies is sometimes finding some old gem of a cult favorite that’s actually a pretty good movie even if it isn’t particularly well known. And I gotta say, 1987’s The Gate sure does fit the bill.
The Gate, of course, is a family-friendly horror movie focused on a kid who finds a gate to hell in his backyard. It’s got a PG-13 rating, and it may even push that envelope a bit while still producing a rather good movie all told.
After a particularly intense nightmare involving finding his house abandoned and his backyard treehouse going down in a storm, 12 year old Glen (a very young Stephen Dorff) wakes to find the tree really did come down. As workmen remove the tree, the hole where the tree once was sits there, allowing Glen and his best friend Terry (Louis Tripp) to go digging to see if they can find a geode, something that may be worth some money. They do find something, but then Glen’s parents go off on a three day trip, leaving Glen’s older sister Al (Christa Denton) in charge.
Things go weird when it turns out the hole in the backyard goes very deep, possibly to a realm of gods who predate the Bible, and Glen and Terry may have inadvertently opened up a, you know, gate to that realm.
I gotta say, this is a fun movie. It’s a horror movie, but the scares are both effective and not too intense for kids. There’s a good internal logic, and things get worse when the family dog dies of what appears to be old age. Corpses seem to reanimate, ghosts appear, fake adults show up, and small demons called minions run around scaring the crap out of Glen, Terry, and Al. Those minions are, for the most part, stop motion creations, and they’re actually pretty effective special effects. In fact, this whole movie has some pretty effective special effects, probably on par with Ghostbusters.
The script is smart too. Glen is a kid, but he’s neither an idiot or a know-it-all. And even at that young age, Dorff shows some real on-screen talent. Knowing the guy is still working in movies today, I like seeing where he might have gotten his start.
So, basically, The Gate is just a fun horror movie for the whole family.
Grade: B+
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