The Gates

John Rhys Davies stars in this. But at the age of 80, the blunderbuss vocal energy of his Raiders Of The Lost Ark days are gone. Then again with the stilted, monologue type dialogue he and the rest of the cast are given to work with, it's not surprising. In fact, it is so uninspiring and dull, that I found it actually painful to listen to, so only lasted 30 minutes of the 1 hour 50.

Which is a pity, as the production quality is decent. Convincing Victorian sets, street scenes, and costumes and a decent soundtrack, show an attempt to be above the B movie bracket.

Plot wise, I cannot really comment much. Victorian death row prisoners, new fangled electrickery, sciency stuff, mixed with dead prisoners ghosts and paranormal shenanigans. It all sounds too familiar.

Go watch penny Dreadful instead.

One known name to head the poster: Check!

Found old prison to serve as the place where to shoot almost the entire movie: Check!

Apart from above everything about this movie is awful. Terribly awful. Oh, apart from the mass murderer, because he was actually kind of cool.

This movie reminds me of a too long and drawn out episode of some campy Sherlock Holmes episode for teenagers. Everything, apart from maybe the first two minutes, is absolutely wrong. Which is quite interesting in a way. Did they use some other director for the first two minutes, I wonder, because the first two minutes were actually dark and bloody. Immediately after that everything turned horribly boring with a horribly boring script and cast.

For a low-budget film, this one delivers superior production value and atmosphere! It's so nice to see a film that allows for the purely supernatural, without trying to explain everything in pseudoscience terms!

Good, also, to see old John Rhys-Davies in a starring role again! The principals all turn in fine performances, although a few of the lesser performers were truly atrocious (especially Lucien's associate!).

Richard Brake was a fine choice for the intensely evil William Colcott; he delivered a truly menacing performance!

All-in-all, if you don't expect too much from this modest-sized project, I think most people who appreciate a good gothic tale will find it surprisingly satisfying!

Don't buy all these fake reviews on here. This is one of the most boring, drawn out, tiring films I've ever seen. I couldn't get past 1 hour 20 minutes. It's literally a bunch of people dressed in period piece costumes in an old prison discussing some ghost.

I fell asleep twice trying to get through it and just gave up. All these 8 or 7 reviews are completely fake. I couldn't spend one more minute watching this thing. It's just that boring and drawn out. Why is every scene just boring dialogue? If you like falling asleep on your couch while trying to get through a 2 hour movie then this is for you!!! 2/10.

First, it's a rather long movie for the substance. They really go to lengths to draw things out unnecessarily. The script is painful to listen to. It's very sophomoric, and the over-baked archetypes make the acting pretty cringe. I actually really like. John Rhys-Davies from other movies. Elena Deliia also does a good job with a poor script. However, Michael Yare should seek employment as something other than an actor. It's like watching a junior-high school student attempt acting for the first time. What makes it all worse is, even though there are a few good actors, there is absolutely zero synchronicity between the cast. None of them mesh well together, so it makes it really difficult to try to enjoy what little gems there are to this story. This could have been done a million times better, and they obviously had the budget for it.