The Darkening

Rebecca (Rebecca Kyler Downs) has sank her every dollar into a lovely bed & breakfast overlooking the sea on the California coast. Unfortunately for her although ideal, the place doesn't yield much in the way of customers because strange things occur and the guests don't usually last past a few hours. Cue up the ghost hunters Scott and Justin who are going to get to the bottom of the satanic ballyhoo going on.

"The Black Gate" is a potentially interesting film that echoes several others (The Uninvited. The Amityville Horror, etc.) but it really doesn't develop anything beyond the occasional "boo scare". The acting is decent but bland. No stand-outs due mostly to a under developed script and minor direction. You would think that with the close confines of the place that they could generate some tension but alas that is not the case. The music track doesn't help much either when most of the time it seems to disappear along with your interest.

The acting is mostly horrible. The lead is decent, though. The effects and editing are bad. The story is silly, with devil worshipers trying to "open the gate" to Hell and all that. The good guy is a psychic with knowledge of the occult and comes to fix the problem.

So, if you look at it differently, there is a problem with a door and they call in the mystical locksmith. With a lot of mambo jumbo that none of us, non technical people, would understand, he fixes the door and everybody goes back happy.

Am I joking? Not really. This movie is just as interesting as watching the locksmith fixing your front door and therefore I will stop here.

(1995) The Black Gate/ The Darkening HORROR

Straight to rental, poorly made horror film which during the credits said 1976 on something, but was probably held back and finally released on DVD up until 2004 even though according to database it says 1995, as it could have been upgraded of the unconvincing quality special effects. About a haunted house hunted by an old previous encounter which has a lot to do with the people who used to live there (as if we hadn't seen this before) with two hired ghost hunters, Scott Griffin (Jeff Rector) and Justin Reid (George Phillip Saunders) figuring to put a stop to it. Cheesy all around with not much thought going into it.

This film is finally coming out on DVD with awkwardly edited end credits to disguise how old it is. Despite its age no one has ever reviewed it or voted on it so it may have never really come out. (I'm writing this as of April 2005) A bed and breakfast is being haunted so the female owner has two guys come by to try to "de haunt" the place because no one will stay there. Jeff Rector is pretty good in the lead role of spiritualist one of his better performances. George Saunders is typically shallow.

The special effects are a bit uneven in spots but hold up pretty well over all and are certainly a break for the twitching jump cutting approach to ghost stories currently in vogue.

The transfer to video really dates the film more than any other elements other than maybe the music, but both of these elements lend a sort of vintage late night cable feel to the film that helps it.

Maybe it's nothing great but it sure seems like a whole movie and is better than a recent groaner like Darkness.

This is decent on all levels and worth a watch.

Just a flat out bad movie.Awful acting and effects, and the stupid demon guy grunting and screaming just wasn't very scary. Very Low budget spent mostly on interesting shots of the Pacific Ocean and fake clouds, not very well thought out plot either because the time frame was just all messed up,awful pacing problems, too many shots of people sleeping cutting out of the story, the worst scene in the whole movie was the scene where the girl was running away from nothing and fell into a clearly fake spiderweb, with the camera spinning around in circles for no reason and then she tripped of a cliff. And the scene where Richard pretended to be an attractive demon and tried to seduce Scot was also a very bad piece of film making.

NOT VERY GOOD ONE OF THE WORST 1/10