“Shut up, I love it! He said shut up to the gremlin!”

Justin’s rating: There have to be more productive side hobbies

Justin’s review: The Gate was one of my recent favorite cult movie discoveries, a hidden gem of an ’80s flick that meshed a Goonies-like ensemble with some Poltergeist craziness. And while it’s not widely known, The Gate is more recognizable than its hard-to-find sequel. In fact, it took me two years before I got my hands on The Gate 2: The Trespassers, and I consider myself fortunate it didn’t take longer.

Filmed only a year after The Gate’s debut by the same director, The Gate 2 sat in limbo until the ’90s came to put it into motion.

It’s been a few years since a group of irresponsible kids opened up a portal into hell in a suburban backyard. Clearly, the lesson learned here is that they didn’t do it right the first time and should try, try again — just with more practice.

This is the mentality of a Bill Gates-looking Terry (Louis Tripp), who becomes the sole character returning for this second outing. Facing a life with a dead mom and alcoholic father, Terry figures that by mastering the Gate, he’d be able to, I don’t know, set wrongs to right like it was Quantum Leap. Using a mixture of high-tech and demonology, he cracks open the old house’s portal… and brings forth a minion.

As an aside, I can only imagine what the “Satanic Panic” brigade of the ’80s would’ve done with this movie as ammunition. It probably came out too late and was too small to be of notice, though.

Two bullies and a new love interest — Liz, played by Pamela Adlon — horn in on the action, hoping to get their pet wish granted. For that’s what the stop-motion minion does; it grants wishes. But these are very much Monkey Paw-style requests, where what you get is likely to have a pretty bad downside.

It’s hard to root for teens that are stupid enough to be playing with demonic fire like this. They start making wishes while going, “Hey, what could happen?” and I don’t feel one bit sorry what’s coming their way. All their wishes literally turn into crap, one of the bullies transforms into a demon, and Terry’s dad ends up in a plane accident (but survives somehow).

What really worked for the original Gate is that you had a full crew of likable kids who got over their head and tried to patch things up the best they could. Here, it’s almost the reverse: Older teens deliberately cracking open the gate for their own benefit. It’s missing that camaraderie of friends joking their way through a weird situation, and that immediately takes the fun factor down a few notches.

While I do respect the continuity of the same director, main character, and storyline, it’s not quite enough to recapture the kooky mixture that made the first film work so well. I can’t condemn it, though; The Gate 2 may be living in the shadow of its predecessor, but it’s not quite doing the same thing, either. The idea of deliberately exploiting the gate for personal gain is an interesting one, and it does lead us to all sorts of special effects sequences.

At the end of the day, The Gate 2 is an ’80s horror movie sequel, with some of the good and all of the bad that this entails. There are some cool visual effects sequences, and I appreciate that it wasn’t a straight-up retread of the original. The Gate 2 has a few original thoughts all its own — but that can’t keep it from being a little brother endlessly wishing that it was as cool as its older sibling.

Intermission!

• What’s he doing with that hamster? WHAT’S HE DOING WITH THAT HAMSTER?
• The smell of the dead is like hot nacho cheese
• Haha he shoots the little dude
• This is the kind of detention where you had to study a book
• “We really did touch the infinite, didn’t we?”
• Terry’s hockey outfit
• Airlines will put a one-day-sober recovering alcoholic as a commercial pilot
• Hehe the minion swinging and obviously so bored
• “It’s not Wheel of Fortune, it doesn’t work that way.”
• That’s a dinosaur-amount of poop
• “Who needs demons when you got chicks?”
• That’s a whole lot of unsafe driving
• That angled bathroom mirror is wigging me out
• That’s quite the cartoonish hole in the brick wall