4/09/2020

The Gathering (2002) - Everyone loses with Gilbert's thoroughly terrible calamitous horror flop



Star Christina Ricci looks sultry in a hoodie in a dirty, cross-marked cellar on this sparse poster for Brian Gilbert's The Gathering

An American girl in England gets run down by a car and suffers memory loss. She gets accommodation at the car driver's family home. He is busy digging up a newly discovered ancient church, which was supposedly built by Joseph of Arimathea.

And on goes the utterly foolish plot, SPOILER which gathers together the witnesses to Jesus' crucifixion, the first nuclear detonation and the Kennedy assassination in some kind of bundle tied up in an English hamlet. The Gathering is written by Anthony Horowitz (Midsomer Murders (1997-00)) and directed by Brian Gilbert (The Frog Prince (1985)).
None of this religious horror flick's scenes build up suspense, so the story's pay-offs never gain any weight. The editing is retched. And the otherwise gifted Christina Ricci's (Bel Ami (2012)) acting may be likened to the work of a pair of rusty garden shears here. This Gathering is miserable.





Watch a 3-minute video on Ricci's career here

Cost: Estimated 18 mil. $
Box office: 1.3 mil. $
= Box office disaster (returned 0.07 times its cost)
[The Gathering premiered 17 May (Cannes Film Market at the Cannes Film Festival) and runs 92 minutes. Shooting took place in the UK from September - October 2001. The film was never theatrically released in North America. Its 3 biggest markets were Germany with 727k $ (55.9 % of the total gross), Spain with 397k $ (30.5 %) and Poland with 119k $ (9.2 %). It was released in several more markets than the ones accounted for at the film's Box Office Mojo page, but these gross numbers are not made available. Gilbert returned with Hitler's Irishman: The Story of Lord Haw-Haw (2005, TV documentary) and theatrically with Allegiance (2005), his last film. Ricci returned in Anything Else (2003). 14,589 Rotten Tomatoes users have given The Gathering a 2.92/5 average rating.]

What do you think of The Gathering?

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