Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

James Hitchcock Cassie Grant, an American girl visiting England, loses her memory after she is hit by a car. The driver of the car, Marion Kirkman, invites Cassie to stay at her house in the small cathedral city of Ashby Wake. While recovering, Cassie makes the acquaintance of the Kirkman family including Marion's husband, Simon, an art historian who has been called in to examine some strange carvings in a newly-discovered underground Christian church dating back to Roman times. Cassie is troubled by recurring and disturbing visions which seem to be linked to this church, to a scandal from the past involving allegations of child abuse at a local orphanage (which turns out to be the house in which the Kirkmans now live) and to a group of people who regularly appear and seem to be watching her.The point of making Cassie an American was presumably because the presence of a big- name Hollywood star would help crack the US market, but Christina Ricci fits in well and, unlike some Hollywood stars called on to provide the token big name in a low-budget British film, does not play to the gallery or stand out by reason of an obvious "Look at me! I'm a star!" attitude. "The Gathering" is a thriller with a supernatural element, here provided by the legend of The Gathering. (This appears to be an invention of the scriptwriter, but has similarities to the legend of the Wandering Jew). According to this legend, a group of people who attended the crucifixion of Christ out of morbid curiosity were condemned to an unwanted immortality and to wander through the world witnessing disasters and murders for all eternity. It is The Gathering whose faces are carved in the recently discovered church, and their appearance in Ashby Wake presages some coming disaster in the town.Ever since the likes of "The Exorcist", "The Omen" and "The Amityville Horror" in the seventies, supernatural thrillers have tended to rely heavily on special effects, with their human protagonists bravely confronting evil ghosts or demons. "The Gathering", however, can be seen as reverting to an earlier tradition of the horror film in which supernatural perils are hinted at rather than shown in their full gory detail. I was particularly reminded of "Curse of the Cat People" from the forties. Like Irena, the ghost in that film, Cassie (who, it transpires, is herself a member of The Gathering) is a supernatural figure who has done wrong in a past life but who seeks to atone for her wrongdoing by protecting rather than harming the humans who surround her. As with Irena, the person whom Cassie is particularly concerned to protect is a young child to whom she has become attached, in this case the Kirkmans' son Michael. As in the earlier film, the real source of danger is not the forces of the supernatural but a human agent, in this case a half-mad motor mechanic seeking an indiscriminate revenge for wrongs done to him. In keeping with the often grim subject matter, director Brian Gilbert gives the film a restrained, understated and sombre look. I had previously only seen one of Gilbert's films, "Wilde", but that was one which impressed me greatly and I would consider it one of my favourite films of the nineties. "The Gathering" is perhaps not in quite the same class, but it is nevertheless a highly watchable, unusual and intriguing film. It is a thriller with a religious theme which raises some important questions about the nature of evil, sin, atonement and redemption. 7/10 Some goofs. The place name "Ashby", like all English place names ending in –by, is of Norse rather than Saxon origin and is only found in northern and eastern England, in those parts of the country which were settled by Norsemen. "Ashby Wake" is therefore an unlikely name for a city situated in the South-West. (We know it is somewhere near Glastonbury). No Christian churches were built in the 1st century; during this period Christians were a small, persecuted minority who met in one another's homes and had no public places of worship.

tchoudhr This movie is about as bad as it gets. I'm not sure why there are so many decent reviews. The entire premise is goofy. Somehow it's supposed to be based on Christianity, but the whole concept of the watchers being damned is completely antithetical to Christianity. "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.." ring a bell? The script was terribly written. Scene after scene has basic boring dialog with no depth or emotion. Scenes that defied logic and at the same time were predictable....wait, that IS impressive. Like the car crash scene. Did no one see that coming from a mile away? But at the same time ridiculous because no one even attempts to slow down when a car flips over in the middle of the road? Christina Ricci's acting is HORRIBLE. She managed to muster a complete absence of emotion or believability in almost every scene.Much of the story was just nonsensical. Why would you let a total stranger with amnesia live with you and take unsupervised care of your kids almost immediately? Why doesn't Ricci try to find out who she is? She just seems content to live in perfect strangers' home. Why were people acting like they weren't alarmed by the killer? Didn't they know they had wronged him? Once guy certainly did because he told him he didn't touch him as he begged for his life. Why did the killer want to kill the boy? Was anybody else wondering why it was OK to have the people who helped Christina push the car with the bomb around the corner blown up when the car bomb went off? Thanks for killing us, Ricci! Why bury the church if it does nothing to stem future tragedies? Because there's simply a sculpture depicting the gatherers? Why did the gatherer guy kill somebody to make sure an event happens when he himself says that there's no use trying to stop anything because events can't be changed? Where in the secret decoder ring does it say if Ricci saves someone from being killed she's no longer damned? Why don't he rest of the Gatherers just save somebody and set themselves free? What happens to Christina Ricci's character in the end - does she go to heaven? Wander on earth? Who knows? Why can the boy only see her? How does she take human form again after she's been shot and killed? I'm jumping around I know, but there was just so much lameness I can't name it all.The music in the movie is sooo over dramatic as well. It gives a feeling this huge plot is building, but no plot builds - no climax, nothing. Just a steady stream of booooorrrinnng. I'm sorry, I just couldn't take any of this movie seriously.I don't totally recommend against watching the moving, however. It's actually fun to see how much absurdity you can find while watching it. Really, watch it, but watch it with Mystery Science Theater in mind.

Aaron1375 I only got this one because it came free when I bought "The Mist" on DVD. I am sure glad I never bought it. I thought about it at one time, but I have never been much of a Christina Ricci fan and she is the star of this one. Unfortunately, her scenes drag the movie down, not that she is bad, but for me the most interesting scenes involved the discovery of the church. The story has a girl hit by a step mum with her kid in the car. The woman grateful the girl is okay lets her stay with her and her husband in their rather big house. The husband is a researcher of some sorts looking at the remains of the church mentioned above. There is something different about said church. There are also mysterious people showing up in town that seemingly know Ricci's character. A rather good death at the beginning of the film and a few premonition scenes like one would find in the movie "The Sixth Sense" scattered throughout the movie. Then at the end a couple of more deaths and the startling revelation which I had figured out a bit before the end. Did not really startle me. So not much horror, not much tension, a mystery that really was not to hard to figure out and the pacing was a bit slow with needless plot points. However, someone else may well think this movie is great, just not my taste.

mikamage This contains spoilers so do not read if you actually plan on watching this terrible, terrible film.Not often do I see a movie where I get more and more angry the longer I watch. The idiocy of the plot, the fact that all those that "gathered" to watch Christ die were all Caucasians, the secret church that has nothing to do with the plot at all, the gathering ghosts that are there to just "watch" but actually end up killing several people (Why? Are they Satanic now? There is no reason!), the forced message about second chances when the step-mom was just shot dead, this movie is terrible!You cannot (cannot!) photo-shop a swastika on the Statue of Liberty and use the concept to make a shocking thriller about how it's actually a secret Nazi missile silo, just like you cannot use JFK footage to try and convince an audience that the ghost of Caucasian Christ haters were at the assassination of Kennedy. But wait, this movie did just that!Ricci is as bad an actor as Reid in my book (yes, that bad) after watching this monstrosity. I feel like scratching the disc so no one else at Blockbuster will have the misfortune of sitting though this "exclusive."Do not see this movie, ever!