Thursday 27 October 2016

Review: The Gate 2, Trespassers (1990)

Stars: Louis Trip, Simon Reynolds

Directed by: Tibor Tacaks

Budget: $2 million

The second story in the gate series, this is one of films where i actually liked the second one better than the first. Some might agree some might disagree on that.

This film follows Terry the boy who was friends with Glen from the first film. He's turned into somewhat of a nerd since the first film, also only three years later Terry does look considerably older.

So Terry the boy who we learnt lost his mum some time before the first film. His father is an alcoholic whose lost his job from it since his wife has died. Though he does get a new job with the same company later on.
So Terry has been studying demonology since the last film and using some computer tech and lasers he sets up a summoning gate in the basement of a knocked down house.
halfway through the summoning some bullies interfere with the ritual but with the help of the girl, Liz who also seems to be slightly into demons he talks them into joining in. Terry does the ritual and it seemingly doesn't work which angers the bullies.

Then one of the little demon things from the first film appears one of the bullies pulls a gun and blows it away. He then proceeds to destroy most of Terry's equipment. Terry then bottles the dead demon in a jar and takes it home. His wish kind of comes true when his dad gets a new job but it's not the best. Observing the demon Terry notices the bullet wound does seem to be healing, then suddenly later on the demon breaks free of the jar.
In an amusing little scene Terry manages to capture the little tyke and put it in a cage. He's visited by the girl a little later who starts to exploit the situation wishing for loads of things.

The bullies from earlier see Terry and the girl racing around in a sports car, after a weird dream sequence Terry wakes up to see all the wishes have turned literally into piles of shit. Liz rings him to confirm and we see the car has turned into a giant pile of shit too.
No sooner is this realisation hit that Terry thinks about his dad, 2 seconds later there's a knock at the door and low and behold his dad's had an accident.

Liz is beset by her bully boyfriend and spills the beans about the wishes. As Terry gets home he's assaulted by Liz's boyfriend as they rush off. They have broken in trashed the place and stolen the demon.
Getting high on a joyride the demon escapes it's sack confinement and causes havoc in the car. John Liz's boyfriend while trying to tackle the demon gets bitten. Moe keeps control of the car through all this.
The of course wish for lots of cash, in a fancy restaurant John starts to feel ill an then all their money turns into crap.

Meanwhile Liz and Terry are preparing a vessel to send the demon back to where it came from. Back in the restaurant John runs and crashes his car, then as Terry and Liz are about to go find the demon moe shows up saying that John transforming in a warehouse where moe works. After searching around for a bit we see moe is also getting ill. Then we see John has totally transformed into giant demon and moe either kills himself or falls to his death.

The movie here suffers from the same fate as the first it seems like they had wrote and wrote and now needed to come up with an ending. They throw lots of demons within etc in and travel with a Terry empowered vessel back to the original films house. Really speaking any further will spoil the end of the film despite there being 16+ minutes of running time left.
A few gripes about this film is as said the ending seems oh we need an explanation now throw in shit!, It feels like an early 80s film with some of the dialogue and Liz the way she seems to flip flop from Terry to John annoys me.

Aside from that the bullies make some good humour as does the little demon, more so than the first film. I also like Terry's character a lot, he is quite well written.
Is the film worth a watch? Just about especially if you have seen the first one and in some ways it does surpass the first in the first 2 thirds of the film making it for me a hairs breath better, the acting is also tenfold too.
THN awards gate 2 trespassers a decent 3 out of 5 stars.


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