Rise of the Gargoyles (2009)

This is another of the Man Eater series from the fine folks at Genius Products.  I’m pretty sure this is also one of those movies that showed up on the Sci-Fi channel as well.  My track record has been mixed with these movies.  Some of them have been pretty decent, some not so much.  I would say this one falls in the middle somewhere.

Eric Balfour plays a professor that specializes in Gargoyle research (they have those?) as part of his research of medieval art.  Estranged from his wife and kids, he is a professional pariah because of some odd theories that some of the mythical creatures might have been based on real creatures.  To cheer him up his super hot friend Carol takes him to see an odd church that sports some interesting Gargoyles.  Sure enough she takes something that draws a real life Gargoyle to her.  Without spoiling anything this sets into motion the typical series of events that most monster movie/creature features have of the authorities not believing the hero and it being up to him to save everyone.  Or in this case Paris (which is clearly in Romania now!). 

This is a very serviceable and predictable monster movie.  You get the standard setup with the hero that no one pays attention to, partly because of his screwed up past.  He has to band together with a few other oddballs (in this case the tabloid reporter and her cameraman) to try and save everyone in spite of themselves.  The monster picks off a couple of characters, including a surprise here and there, before it is defeated.  And of course to kill the monster requires an overly complicated plan that most logical human beings would never ever agree to.  But this isn’t real life, so the actions make complete sense given that they are contained in a monster movie! 

The special effects are all CGI.  Seriously they didn’t even try to make any portion of the Gargoyle with practical effects.  But then they also keep the creature in the shadows for much of the movie’s runtime so I didn’t really notice much.  There is a severed head and some other body bits and pieces that are on set effects that aren’t perfect, but that do show some effort to make this as gory as possible.  But if you are looking for a practical effects gore fest you are looking in the wrong place.  Rise of the Gargoyles delivers some decent effects and gore for a low budget monster movie.  In fact it exceeded my expectations, that to be fair were pretty low. 

In the end this isn’t a great movie, but I think it is worth checking out at least once if you are a fan of creature features.  It was a nice way to get my monster movie fix, but I doubt I’ll be popping this one back in the player again anytime soon.  If you can pick the DVD up on the cheap then I recommend buying it, otherwise I recommend a rental. 

2 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2009 John Shatzer