Sunday, December 01, 2024

It's a Rock Monster

An architectural historian is shocked to find gargoyles coming to life in France and tearing people's heads off. 2009's Rise of the Gargoyles is a SyFy channel movie with cheap cgi and actors from daytime soap operas. I found the screenplay's inscrutable chain of logic kind of interesting.

One question no-one asks is, "Why?" Why are gargoyles coming to life and killing people? Why some people and not others? The architectural historian, Jack (Eric Balfour), has to be coaxed by a friend into visiting an 19th century church that's about to be demolished. Why does he have to be coaxed if this is his specialty? They rouse the wrath of they gargoyle for reasons that aren't clear. Jack manages to get some footage--his camera is busted in the escape but some news reporters manage to retrieve the footage. However, all the data is wiped the next morning as part of a routine in which all systems are rebooted at the news station. Why?

So Inspector Gibert can't see it of course. He's played by Welsh actor Ifan Huw Dafydd who puts on the most ridiculous, Pepe Le Pew accent you can imagine for the role, which stands in contrast to actual French speaker Caroline Neron who plays the news reporter--she's Canadian. The movie was shot at least partially in France, why doesn't it have any French actors? These are the enduring mysteries of Rise of the Gargoyles.

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