The Gates Of Hell

Review by Sara

Directed by Kelly Dolen, starring Michael Piccirilli, Samantha Noble, Christian Clark, Bradley Tomlinson and Amy Beckwith. 2008.

The Gates Of Hell follows Kyle (Michael Piccirilli) and his four fellow filmmakers, as they set out to make an online interactive movie. Their location is the Von Diebitsch Manor, where they unknowingly become unwilling participants in their own film. The group discovers a tape recorder deep inside the bowels of the house.

As Kyle and his friends huddle around the tape recorder, they listen as John Behringer tells them the story of the Von Diebitsch Manor. Forty-two years ago, he and his wife abandoned their son behind the gates of Von Diebitsch Manor to a woman named Petra Von Diebitsch. She would take in children who were rejected by society and then inflict harm on them, brutally torturing them down in the cellar.

One by one Kyle's friends fall victim to Petra and her deformed "children." What the film lacks in character development and dialogue, it makes up for in kills. A little too darkly lit for my taste; we are still able to appreciate disembowelments, skull crushings and pretty good makeup effects.

Despite the low budget look and feel of the film, I still enjoyed it. I thought that the plot was original, even though you can clearly see the influences of George Romero's Diary Of the Dead, The Hills Have Eyes and Evil Dead.