Review of Gate II (1990) by Allan C — 13 Aug 2015

Sequel to the surprisingly good first film boast the return of the original film's director, Tibor Takacs , and writer, Michael Nankin. However, this sequel is minus a before-he-was-famous Stephen Dorff and instead has supporting actor Louis Tripp taking over as the lead.

He was a pretty funny supporting character in the original, playing the heavy metal nerd who accidentally opens a gate to hell in his friend's backyard by playing a metal album backwards and reading ancient words off of the album.

This sequel picks up after the events of the first film, and Tripp and some new friends once again opens the titular gate to have the little demons do his bidding. As you'd expect, things don't go as planned and the new group of teens find themselves running for their lives and trying to figure out how to once again close the gate.

This sequel features more stop motion special effects, as well as more monsters, which was a lot of fun. However, lost in this sequel is the childlike Steven Spielberg sensibility. The first film felt like a horror movie version of "E.

T." "Explorers" or "The Goonies," but this sequel felt more like a straight horror movie. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but that was a strength of the original film. Overall, despite note being as good as the original, this sequel is well worth watching for fans of 80s horror films (even if "Gate 2" was released in 1990).