The Gathering

Several months ago a friend of mine mentioned that he had put a movie into the DVD player for background noise while he graded some papers, and that he quickly became so absorbed in the show that he stopped grading the papers. The movie was The Gathering, and it belongs to my least favorite genre, horror. I really don't understand the attraction of horror movies. Isn't life scary enough already? Modern horror movies tend to be very gory and misogynistic, too, so for the most part I have no time for such things. Friend E. mentioned one detail about The Gathering which intrigued me, however: the plot turns around the discovery of an ancient Christian church which has been buried for many years. So I put it into the Netflix queue, and its number finally came up.

The scenes of the church were quite intriguing. At the front of the church there was a large crucifix, free-standing, but its back was to the congregation. The wall facing the crucifix was a bas relief of maybe two dozen people, all of whom had rather eerie expressions on their faces. Quite an interesting set up.

The movie was okay--I won't spoil the plot just in case you feel the need to pursue it--and even slightly interesting at times. Although it was rated R, it actually had very little gore. I'm guessing it was the fact that Christina Ricci's character shouted "Fuck" a couple of times too many which actually garnered it that rating--silly world. The church thing itself was worth the price of admission for me. There was also a moment wherein a priest uttered a line which I thought was worth keeping--so I kept it. It goes like this: “If people become obsessed with evils that might occur, they neglect the present good that they should do.” It seemed to be a good thing to keep in mind in this age of terror hype. Next time you see the Al Qaeda boys training on the monkey bars, try laughing at the ludicrous image and think about something useful instead . . . like the good that you should (and can) do.