The Gathering - 2003 film review

I'd never heard of the film The Gathering until I came across it on a streaming service. It's generally described as a horror movie, but when I noticed that the script was by the exceptionally prolific Anthony Horowitz, I was intrigued. Horowitz is a very talented storyteller with a gift for clarity (very important in storytelling, and by no means as common as one might imagine) and you can always be confident that he'll supply pace and plot twists.

I'm pretty sure that the film doesn't rank as one of his greatest successes, but it's certainly not a failure, either, because the central plot idea - which came to him, apparently, when he witnessed a car crash - is interesting and strong enough to keep the story moving along after a rather jerky start, in which two young people die at Glastonbury when a chasm opens in the ground to reveal a long-buried church.

Stephen Dillane plays Simon Kirkman, an expert who is called in by the church authorities to investigate. The hush-hush nature of the investigation suggests that the powers that be (headed by Robert Hardy, who is always good value) know more about the site than they care to admit. Meanwhile, Simon's wife Marion is driving a car when she is distracted by her young son Michael. She hits a young American woman called Cassie (played by Christina Ricci) but thankfully Cassie is barely hurt. She is, however, suffering from amnesia. She goes to live with the Kirkmans in their very posh house and becomes attached to Michael. But then spooky things start to happen in the local village...

As the story begins to take shape, there are a number of unexpected developments, including another car accident. I wasn't exactly biting my nails, and I did think that there was a certain diffusion of interest that reduced the tension. For instance, Marion becomes peripheral to the story, so what happens to her has less impact that it might have done. All the same, it's one of those horror films that manages to avoid the silliness that is often the fate of this genre. Perhaps it's not as horrific as it should have been, but it's good entertainment.