By Dan Skip Allen

I love a genre of film where a group of friends decide to go out for some reason whether it’s the last time they’ll see each other for a while or the first time they’ve seen each other in a while or for some other reason. The group ends up getting into some kind of trouble. That’s the case here with “The Gates”. It’s a pretty simple concept except for one thing that makes this movie stand out. This is the last film from 90s Heartthrob James Van Der Beek, who passed away a couple of weeks ago. He was relatively young. In his mid-forties. It hit a lot of people who grew up watching “Dawson’s Creek” hard. I loved him, though, in “Varsity Blues”. That is one of my favorite football movies. It also had a great soundtrack that included one of my favorite bands, “Green Day”. He will be sorely missed.

Three friends (Mason Gooding, Algee Smith, and Kieth Powers) in Texas decide to go out on the town. They were planning on meeting some female friends in another town from where they live, but on the way there, they hit gridlock on the highway. Their GPS shows them a shortcut around the traffic, so they choose to go in that direction. It takes them to a gated community where they need a pass code to get in. A woman who happens to be going on gives them the code so they can get in and go through. As they were driving around to find the exit, they witnessed the woman in red getting beat up by a man in black inside one of the houses. She falls and hits her head on a fireplace. She looks dead, but the men make a noise outside the house, and the man inside sees them. This leads to a chase. The young men run around the community to try and find help, but this other man is a pillar of the community as the local pastor of the church.

Besides the main characters, there are a few supporting characters that help this story move forward. A local football coach in the community is played by Brad Leland. Even though he’s a supporter of the pastor, he also knows j<st because these young men are black. It doesn’t mean they are wrong about what they’ve seen. KyIr Coffman is a local police officer who seems to be on the side of the Van Der Beek character and has his own agenda. Many others at a teen party are hard to pinpoint regarding how they stand out, but they weren’t that important. The four main actors are the most pivotal part of this story.

As I’ve mentioned, films like “Nothing But Trouble” remind me of this one except, of course, the creepy weird judge. These three actors are ones that I know of from various other things they’ve done lately, like the “Scream” franchise, “Uglies”, and “The Hate U Give”. These guys are three actors who have built a filmography for themselves, but this movie is one that has a specific message the writer/director John Burr is trying to get across to the viewers. In some areas of the country, some people just don’t like other people, namely Black people. Whether we want to believe it or not racism still exists. This film shows that very evidently.

Another element of the story that is on point is that of the pastor character being a bad guy. Society wants to tell people that religious leaders like pastors, priests, and others like them are supposed to be good people. They care about their flock or congregation as it were. This isn’t always the truth, though. These are men, and as such, men are greedy and sometimes liars. Some of them use God and / or religion to get the lifestyle they want. Riches, expensive cars, and big houses are the result of this. I myself am very skeptical of religious characters in films. They more often than not turn out to be bad guys, and Van der Beek is no exception. Unfortunately, it’s his last role, so it’s sad I have to stereotype him in my review as a bad guy.

“The Gates” is a clichéd movie that I’ve seen in different forms in the past. Just because it’s got different actors and the story is a little different doesn’t mean it’s any better. John Burr took a popular trope of a group of people getting lost or off track, and this gets them into trouble in some form or another and tried to do something a little different with it. Regarding racial undertones and religious iconography.  It just falls into the same tired story elements I’ve seen so many times before. The cast is okay, and Van Der Beek is good, but it’s sad that this is his last film role. Fans of his will have to go back and watch “Dawson’s Creek” or “Varsity Blues” to get the stench of this film out of their minds. The young cast will also have better days in their careers as well. This isn’t their best work. 

2 stars