Rise of the Gargoyles

Year of Release: 2009
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 3.8 / 10
Level of Awful: Low
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

A new year, another round of crappy movies. Oh, it makes my soul feel happy 🙂 First of all, let’s clear some things up about this movie. To start, the title is misleading: there is, in fact, only a single gargoyle. Secondly, the CGI wasn’t bad for this type of outing, although you don’t see the gargoyle very often so it probably explains how they could afford to do it reasonably well. Finally, Eric Balfour should stick to being in Haven. All that being said, this wasn’t a terrible movie. It was boring as hell most of the way through, but when things happened they happened quite well. All in all, a good way to ease ourselves into 2012, b-grade style!

Well that sounds absolutely ludicrous! Of course I'll star in it!

We begin our slow adventure with Jack Randall, a university professor who’s in a bad way at the moment. He’s busy going through a divorce and nobody wants to publish his latest book. If it weren’t for the fact that his class on gargoyles was going so well and the blonde and lovely Carol is throwing herself at him relentlessly the gods alone know what he might do to himself. Carol, feeling that Jack needs to get over his depression so that he can a.) move on with his life and b.) mount her decides to take him to a church that’s busy being torn down. They have some amazing gargoyles stuck around the building and since it’s about to be demolished anyway a little breaking and entering really won’t do all that much harm. Dear, sweet Carol. If only she knew what slightly horrifying creature she and Jack are about to unleash on the world…

Damn things will insist on playing with their food...

Perhaps ‘the world’ is a bit too broad a term. At the very least they’re gonna unleash the creature on Pseudo-France. You know it’s Pseudo-France because everyone speaks English to one another but in that put-on heavy French accent that no actual French speaker has. Anyway before you know it the monster is wreaking small-scale havoc across whatever city we might be in and Carol’s about to find herself without a head. Ripping off heads appears to be the gargoyle’s preferred method of attack. Why Carol was attacked but the gargoyle is a mystery, but it just might have something to do with the glowing things that look like overripe avocados that she stole from the church. Jack, finding out what happened to her, is understandably distraught but finding it difficult to find anyone who will believe his gargoyle story. Things aren’t helped by the fact that the local chief of police (the most Pseudo-French character in the entire movie) thinks that it’s Jack responsible for ripping the heads of random people and dragging their bodies up the side of buildings.

The gargoyle, enjoying irony, thought it would be funny to hide out in a church.

Good thing for Jack that the one thing you can rely on anywhere in the world is a crack-pot journalist looking for bizarre stories to uncover and expose. Nicole, who gradually loses her Pseudo-French accent as the movie goes on, and her cameraman Walsh are more than happy to lend a hand in exposing the truth behind the gargoyle that’s stalking Pseudo-France. They will be joined by a rather trigger happy Father Gable who also has some minor experience in using explosives. In the confined spaces of a labyrinthine-like church there’s no way that this can possibly go wrong. Armed with a few guns, a big UV light and a vague idea of what they’re going to do when they find the beast the four of them set off on the hunt for the gargoyle. But the gargoyle’s protecting something more than just itself, something that it’s prepared to fight to the death for…

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Universities now offer entire degrees that cater to those wishing to specialise in gargoyle studies.
• It’s entirely possible to contain an ancient evil by sticking it behind a flimsy wooden door.
• Building a church on top of an old church is fairly similar to building a house on a Native American burial ground.
• Gargoyles have amazing homing techniques and can stalk prey that have wandered into their hellish lair for hundreds of miles.
• There are no religious problems with a priest killing a woman to use as bait to lure a gargoyle into a trap.
• Any unholy creature that makes its nest in a church should immediately be referred to as The Beast.

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