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The Black Gate

France 2017
produced by
Montpellier Underground Pictures
directed by Fabrice Martin, Guillaume Beylard
starring Nicolas Couchet, Jeanne Dessart, Jonathan Raffin, Benjamin Combettes, Antony Cinturino, Michel Coste, Antoine Dupuy D'Uby, Julien Zandos, Patricia Flecher, Gilles Ducrocq, Patrick Sage, Christian Barbier, Charles Gréa, Karine Heinrich, Carl Laforêt, Jaques Langlois, Elsa Toto, Mattias Wespelaere, Mathis Ducrocq, Leonie Querelle, Camille Ducrocq
story by Fabrice Martin, screenplay by Fabrice Martin, Remy Seffe, music by Double Dragon, Sandy Blanco, Claude Moynier, F.O.A.D, Rusted, Iris Fayard, makeup effects by Enguerran Prieu, David Scherer, Kevin Cerveau

review by
Mike Haberfelner

Available on DVD!

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After Sarah (Jean Dessart) has received a mysterious book from her uncle Simon (Michel Coste), she and her brother David (Nicolas Couchet) decide to pay the good uncle a visit - to find his castle-like mansion empty ... safe for some mysterious beings that creep them out, and soon they have to realize they're in the front row of a fight against the supernatural.

In the meantime, gangsters Jeff (Jonathan Raffin), Diego (Benjamin Combettes) and Franck (Antony Cinturino) arrive at uncle Simon's mansion with the intention of using it as their hideout, but soon enough Diego and Franck are wiped out by the monsters roaming the castle, and Jeff teams up with Sarah and David in a mere effort to survive. Thing is, Sarah and David have by now found out the creatures must come from a "Black Gate" that links our world to another, dark, dimension, and they have to enter that dimension to close the gate to see that our world isn't overrun by zombies and taken over by the Devil Gods. Thing is, the dark dimension holds just about every threat imaginable, and the mission they're on might just be too big for our heroes to handle ...

 

Now I won't for a minute claim that The Black Gate's plot as such is highly original or even all that well-structured - but it's based on a nightmare logic that just really works for a movie like this. In many ways, this movie's very much reminiscent of Lucio Fulci's Gothic Trilogy and other movies from a bygone era when the prime raison d'être of a horror movie was still to scare the pants off the audience and keep them on the edge of their seats as long as possible, using all techniques at hand rather than relying too heavily on story alone and trying to explain everything away. And in that respect, The Black Gate works quite beautifully, really, it's full of impressive and creepy imagery, it doesn't shy away from gruesomeness, gets gory in all the right places, keeps its tension throughout, and has just the necessary air of mystery to it as well.

A really cool piece of genre cinema, actually.

 

 

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review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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Thanks for watching !!!

 

 

In times of uncertainty of a possible zombie outbreak, a woman has to decide between two men - only one of them's one of the undead.

 

There's No Such Thing as Zombies
starring
Luana Ribeira, Rudy Barrow and Rami Hilmi
special appearances by
Debra Lamb and Lynn Lowry

 

directed by
Eddie Bammeke

written by
Michael Haberfelner

produced by
Michael Haberfelner, Luana Ribeira and Eddie Bammeke

 

now streaming at

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Vimeo

 

 

 

Robots and rats,
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Tales to Chill
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Tales to Chill
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a collection of short stories and mini-plays
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from the post-apocalyptic
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Tales to Chill
Your Bones to

the new anthology by
Michael Haberfelner

 

Out now from
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