Search - Carver's Gate on DVD

Carver's Gate. Film forsees Bleak Future with Cool Twists

Malcolm Genesis | Oakville, Ont, Canada | 12/12/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Carver's Gate is a low budget (2 million$) sci-fi adventure and the producers must have put every cent on the screen. This film came out before a lot of the Virtual Reality adventure films, and the good thing abot that is that before the cliches were set by Hollywood some thought and fun inteligence went into this production. I don't want to give it all away, but I paid attention when an early low-budgeter like "Carvers Gate" deals with levels of VR and subtle systems breakdown. The sets are spectacular in a futuristically Stalanistic kind of way. The acting is uneven, but not bad for this budget range and Michael Pare is excellent, so is his (unknown) female co-star Maria Manuel. The producer team seems to be Jackson and Dor again, who always seem to do something interesting for the money. Pay attention to the detail -some lovely satire (In one scene a Virtual Game boasts of the entertainment promissed in "sex world" with the line "Remember she's not real, so she has no rights!" It's just a little more dangerous and zingy than your typical low budget sci-fi fair."

A big disappointment...

Amethyst Rose | Tallahassee, FL USA | 03/10/2009

(2 out of 5 stars)

"This movie was too gruesome for my tastes. The earth has become uninhabitable and the remaining population lives underground. After destroying their own planet, people escaped reality by entering DreamLife - a virtual reality game with many destinations. People begin to lose themselves in the games and can no longer distinguish reality from the game.

At the beginning, the creator of a virtual reality immersion game dies in her own game of "After Life". Carver is a "dream breaker" and is called to investigate the power surge that occurred in the game when Diana died. He realizes she was murdered and sets out to find out who killed her and why.

Diana had also created a device that allowed people to "transcend" into the game. When transcending, the game becomes real and so does the risk of injury and death. The company who makes the games, Dream Corp, wants to market the transcender and convince the population that the only solution to save themselves is to permanently transcend into the game and forget about reality. Using the transcender creates a rift between reality and the game, and creatures are able to escape the game and kill the people of earth.

Carver and a few friends must transcend into the game and kill the angel that Diana created to rule over "heaven" in the game. She has become corrupt and feels that humans are irresponsible parasites and no longer deserve to live. It's a race against time as Carver hunts down the angel while the life support for the underground community is failing.

The movie has some suspense but is mostly a gory hack and slash movie with poor special effects and very little going for it."

Only if your a Pare` fan and probably not even then.

Susannah St Clair Foxy Loxy | North Bend Washington | 07/01/2008

(2 out of 5 stars)

"This is just dark, without much to recommend it. Sci Fi but not much of a decent story behind it. The acting isn't much. I ordered because I am a Pare` fan but even with him in it, I doubt I will watch it more than once. That was bad enough.
The story deals with a machine much like you have seen in Matrix. You can "play" in another dimension. Then the inventor is killed ( Michael's girlfriend) and creatures from the other dimension start to be able to "come through" into this one. Every body runs around with plug ins to their head so that they can "play" this all the time. A bad area for the human element indeed. Foxy Loxy"