Main cast: John Rhys-Davies (Frederick Ladbroke), Michael Yare (Lucian Abberton), Elena Delia (Emma Wickes), Richard Brake (William Colcott), David Pearse (Father Matthews), Brian Fortune (Governor Owen Forsyth), and Peter Coonan (George Sheppard)
Director: Stephen Hall
Yes, something that isn’t the usual present day jump scare fest? This I have to give a look.
The Gates is set in Victorian times, when William Colcott goes all Jack the Ripper on various women as part of an occult ritual to resurrect his dead wife. He gets arrested, and as it happens, England has imported this newfangled electric chair from America. Guess who is going to be the lucky fellow to plop his arse on the seat as the first person to ever go out that way.
Alas, maybe that fellow isn’t so dead after all, as postmortem photographers and paranormal investigators Frederick Ladbroke and his niece Emma Wickes, together with Frederick’s rival investigator investigator Lucian Abberton, are going to find out when they all take a trip back to the prison in Bishopgate…
Now, I personally won’t mind seeing more of Frederick and his niece. John Rhys-Davies may take whatever role that comes his way for a paycheck, but he’s always reliable when it comes to playing, well, that slightly weary character that he does so well, and Frederick here is an interesting variation of that role Mr Rhys-Davies finds himself in often.
Frederick is tired, disillusioned, and convinced that all his toil to create scientific gadgets to investigate the paranormal is for nothing. He wants his niece to do something else so that she won’t waste her life, but Emma is still idealistic and passionate enough to believe that they can still make it and be up there with Isaac Newton and such. These two make for an interesting pair of polar opposites that nonetheless remain supportive and affectionate to one another.
Richard Brake really steals the scene as the terrifying William Colcott… and then his character is off the screen after the first ten or so minutes of the movie!
Sadly, what’s left are mostly talking and walking around as Frederick and Lucian argue with the latter generally being patronizing and insufferable to everyone else. The bulk of the movie is filled with rather self-indulgent yammering about science versus superstition, and the whole thing gets boring fast.
It is only in the last ten or so minutes that the movie picks up slightly, but by then, I’ve long gone tired of waiting for something to happen, and I just want everything to end quickly so that I can move on to something.
In other words, this one starts out like a pretty intriguing thriller, then quickly morphs into some tedious affair of nothing much happening. The three main characters walk around, asking people questions, and arguing—all to learn that William Colcott’s ghost does live on in malevolence, something that the members of the audience already knows from the get go and are stuck waiting for these characters to catch up.
The whole thing is a bloody shame, really, as the movie starts out so well, dishing out promises that are all unfulfilled at the end of the day. The capable cast members are all wasted on a script that just meanders on and on in an interminably boring manner. They deserve better, and frankly, so does everyone that has the misfortune to sit through this thing.
