11-11: Les portes de l'enfer

If you see this film in the TV listings just ignore it. If you're looking for something scary you'll be better off watching reruns of the X-Files.

Previous comments referencing the incredibly poor acting by the female lead are dead on. She is almost unwatchable. The sum total of her range includes 'whiny and scared' and 'whiny and not scared'.

I am the kind of movie buff who enjoys a good 'bad' movie. But this is ridiculous. There is no direction. The plot is as simplistic as the set of numbers they keep throwing at you and much like that set of numbers, it ends up having no meaning in the end.

Your time will be better spent if you turn off the TV and give your dog a bath.

The film starts well enough. It is a truly terrifying scene as a couple of fugitives on the run from the law tear apart an innocent family living in a secluded country cottage by killing the mother and father. The young daughter only manages to escape with the aid of a mysterious spectre, who kills the two aggressors while she covers in a downstairs cupboard. Then, we catch up with her 15 years later as a drug-addled student researching the supernatural, living with her promiscuous aunt and being looked after by a mysterious redhead. She has no real friends, was almost raped at a party and keeps having bizarre visions which no-one else can see. So yep, life is grand. Things get a lot more pleasant when she has a falling out with her mum's sister, who is later found dead in a bathtub under suspicious circumstances with 11 etched into her forehead. Hmm, I wonder who the police's main suspect will be? This is quickly followed by more deaths, all linked by their relation to our heroine having been on bad terms with them before their passing. Could she be the culprit, or perhaps the explanation could be something of a more ethereal nature? Clue: If you think the former, you've picked up the wrong movie from Blockbuster. Go back and get the correct one, short-sighted gimp.

As I said, I was all ready to fast-forward to the good parts, safe in the knowledge that I wasn't missing out on anything but a mediocre suspense potboiler. But the first ten minutes grabbed me, and I decided to give it a chance. I was quite pleasantly surprised: it certainly wasn't a masterpiece but the acting was good enough and the script kept throwing up intriguing situations of which I looked forward to finding the solution to. Alas, 45 minutes in, I realised my attention start to wander during a long sequence where the main character is walking round a library, doing nothing. We then get a cheap scare, followed by quarter of an hour of goddledegook about the paranormal between her and her new hunk of a boyfriend. Things only got worse from there, as the promising beginning is thrown out the window as we get one unconvincing plot twist after another, followed by an ending so anti-climatic it's like being promised the moon and ending up with a teeny weeny meteorite instead. Pathetic.

If it was bad all the way through, it would have been far easier to swallow. The fact that it starts at a canter and barely ends with a whimper is not just disappointing, it is heartbreaking. How can something which began so promisingly end up being so formulaic? I don't know, and I don't particularly care. I'll just give the writer and director a bit of advice for next time: Don't spend 5 weeks writing the first part of your screenplay, then 5 minutes finishing the rest. You tend to notice these things in the final product when you treat your project as sloppily as you have here... 3/10

11:11 a.k.a. Hell's Gate (2004) is another bad horror movie that tries too hard to be something it's not. A young girl has an imaginary play mate. One day whilst out in the fields playing with her friends, a couple of fugitives visit her parents and whack them off for no apparent reason. The young girl runs off and hides from the bad men. Years later, the girl grows up into a woman with problems. Losers at her school (looking like repressed homosexuals) flaunt their manhood in front of her when she rejected one of them. The girls hate her and life in general is miserable for her. A secret from her past returns to visit her. Who or what is it? Why does everyone hate her? What's her Guardian's problem with her? To find out you'll have to watch Hell's Gate.

The new title makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I don't know why people are given money to make such bad movies. This film is not even good enough to make fun of. It's a head ache inducing mess that'l confuse anyone who tries to make some sense out of it. Not worth your time.

Not recommended.

I'm 2/3 of the way through this movie and I had to take a break. The intensity of each shot coupled with the surreality of the plot line makes me wish it weren't getting dark outside. I am not a fan of slash-em-up horror movies, but this one intrigued me. It reminds me of the terror Exorcist instilled in me while watching. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for an intense movie, just don't watch it alone. The lead actress does an incredible job at conveying multiple levels of consciousness, which makes the plot and every scene that much more believable. I'll leave it at that and finish once the movie's finished.

The interweaving of prophesy, the supernatural, and incredible direction here is mind- boggling. While the supporting actors, especially the short lived ones, leave a little to be desired in terms of ability, it can be overlooked in the scope of this film. My only wish is that it had gone on longer.

By the time that this film had reached it's conclusion, I had acquired an almost overpowering urge to scoop my eyes out with a dull, rusty spoon, and through the bloody sockets, gouge at my brain in an effort to excoriate the memory center.

I didn't find the lead actress's performance to be as poor or torporous, as had some others. Rather, it was the story itself. It seemed like the director couldn't make his mind up which way to go with the delivery of the plot. The ending totally sucked. A deal is struck between Sara, the main character, and Raden, her imaginary friend... or is she a demon... or a ghost... or an angel... who knows? In any event, Raden tells Sara that if she shoots Seth, Sara's aide de camp throughout the movie, she can go free. If Sara doesn't shoot Seth, she had to go with Raden. Sara opts not to shoot Seth, and is shown walking off with Raden. Two seconds later, she is shown standing there with the muzzle of a pistol pressed against Seth's forehead, and then she shoots him... and goes off with Raden anyway. Then Raden tells Sara that no one can avoid their fate.

If Sara was doomed to go off with Raden no matter what she did, what was the point of having to shoot Seth or not? The whole sequence diminishes and sort of noble sacrifice that Sara might have made in not shooting Seth. She was doomed either way, whether she shot him or not. This movie was not a complete waste of time; it was only about 98% of a complete waste of time. My brain still hurts from having watched it.