The Other Side of the Door

I love horror. These movies are a bit overdone,however I loved the casting. Sarah Wayne Callie's is one of my favorite actresses and Jeremy Sisto can always pull it off. This movie is predictable, however, I watched until the very end. I paused when doing something else! It definitely has some super creepy scenes. They did a great job at making this movie as realistic as possible when dealing with the genre. I ignored the reviews and ratings and rented this on demand. Looking back I would have waiting until Netflix or a non pay. Instead I wanted a good creep and I got it! This movie gets a B- from me and watch before you decide if it's a good or bad movie.

Since a good horror film like "the others" or "shining" apparently comes every decade or two, I've stopped having high expectations. I'm not sure what, but may be horror films can either be masterpieces or a failure. Or it's just that not much budget is put into them. Acting, premise and plot was decent. So I feel a little unfair when I'm gonna bring down so much good work just because of poor writing.

The beginning was appropriately paced fast enough, but it is then that you also realise the narration fails to develop the characters.

Passed mid time, story begs for the resident of the house to question the sudden change in his house, and he doesn't. At that point I start skipping before I get bored.

I watched this because another comment said it was worth a watch. Well, I'm recommending it is if you have some side activity, or if you easily get excited .

"The Other Side of the Door" (2016 release; 95 min.) brings the story of Maria and Michael. As the movie opens, we are informed that this is "Mumbai, India" and we see the couple having dinner and walking on the beach, On a whim, they decide to make Mumbai their home. We then go "Six Years Later", and Maria is having a nightmare, Soon we learn that the couple lost a young son (we learn how in a flashback) and the couple and their daughter are struggling in the aftermath. After Maria tries to commit suicide, the household maid Piki tells her about a mysterious temple in the woods far away, where Maria could meet her little boy one more time and say a final farewell. At this point we're not even 15 minutes into the movie, but to tell you more would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this is the latest horror movie from British director Johannes Roberts, who most recently gave us "Storage 24". Here Roberts goes the super-natural dimension, looking for the thin line between life and death. I must admit that I didn't know a whole lot about this movie going into it, and as it turns out, this was quite the disappointment for me. If shock effects akin to a bat flying out of a cave or toys in a bedroom starting to move are enough to make it a scary movie, then this will be right up your alley. Not to mention that there are several plot points that are utterly unbelievable, even accounting for the fact that this is a horror movie, where all belief is suspended. This is in stark contrast to how much better that other 'horror' movie which I saw recently, "The Witch", was compared to this. Sarah Wayne Collins (as Maria), best know for her work in "The Walking Dead", does the best she can with the material she is given and as always is easy on the eyes. But even she cannot overcome the fact that the movie lacks much character development, and as a result there is little to no emotional investment on the viewer's part. Early on in the movie, Piki tells her that when she is in the temple, whatever her little boy does, "you must not open the door!!!". Wanna take a guess what happens? One of the better aspects of the movie is actually the score, courtesy of Joseph Bishara, a noted composer in the horror movie genre (the "Insidious" franchise, the "Conjuring" franchise, etc.).

"The Other Side of the Door" opened nationwide this weekend. The Friday evening screening where I saw this at here in Cincinnati was attended okay but not great. Couldn't help but notice that I saw 4 or 5 people leave midway through the film, and not returning. I made it to the end, but barely. A darn shame. I love a good horror movie, and surely this wasn't it, but by all means, if you have a chance to check out "The Other Side of the Door", be it in the theater, on VOD or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, I'd encourage you to do so and draw your own conclusion.

Prison Break's Sarah Wayne Callies carries this British-Indian horror production with the same demeanour as her more familiar role; maternal enough to sell the film's major theme, yet strong enough to carry the entire feature. This, after all, is what Callies is tasked with, as the grieving mother she portrays invites her dead son's spirit back to the world of the living with inevitably chilling consequences.

While the majority of studio horror nowadays is bound by so many stipulations - the jump scares, the teenage cast demographics - that ultimately render it generic, The Other Side of the Door benefits from a refreshing change of setting in its Indian locale. As a result, not only does the film look elegantly beautiful with its colours and scenery, but its plot also benefits from a less familiar cultural angle than most supernatural thrillers are afforded. The central menace here - a temple doorway through which the living can contact the dead - is so far removed from Western ideology and the recurring origins of its horror movie monsters that the film undeniably offers something that is at least different, if not completely new. The second act, where things go bump in the night as Maria questions the nature of the spirit she's allowed back into her home, is admittedly routine, but that's not the issue with modern horror; the issue is whether or not it can at least try to overcome this mundane narrative.

This is where the screenplay's wider themes come in to sharper focus, as the audience encourages Maria to make the right choices while sympathising with her fragile state of mind. The horror isn't simply limited to creepy children and unseen entities, but also the lengths a parent is compelled to go to in order to be reunited with a lost child. It's most certainly enough to make the more pedestrian scares forgivable as you witness a family being torn further apart by their loss just as much they are the shadows that lurk around them.

The Other Side of the Door won't terrify you any more than any other supernatural horror released this year, and that's because, by now, genre aficionados really have seen it all. What it will do, however, is linger with you much longer as you place yourselves in the shoes of an emotionally drained mother who, you understand, would do anything to see her son again.

I'll be honest. I think if I hadn't seen this in cinema,with the lights off, the loud sound system and the big screen, I would've given it a lower score. If you saw The Forest earlier this year, you know what to expect from The Other Side of The Door.

The Good: I know a lot of peeps don't like her, but I think Sarah Wayne Callies has a great presence and a naturalness to her performances that I enjoy. She made for a believable mother, who had to make the kind of choice no parent should ever have to. Jeremy Sisto is another actor I like (remember him as the guy who got the arrows in his back in Wrong Turn?) and the kid actress, while average, didn't annoy me and actually appears in one of the better/scarier scenes in this movie. I also liked that the location was India and the evil/dark presence was part of their folklore. It was a little something new, that I hadn't really seen in North American films.

The Bad :Cliches, clichés, clichés! When for the love of Rice will they stop using the tired old tropes of : -Ghost with hollow eyes and stretched mouth (CGI of course) Look over there! Oops no, it's right next to you! (accompanied with loud ass noise) -Parent is completely absent from story for no reason, only to show up at the end. Sisto is VASTLY underused in this movie, to the point where I wondered if there was bad editing and he had scenes that were cut out. -Not following your own rules! (Burn stuff and ghost goes away, but wait, nope!) - Told not to do something or else. Does it anyway! -Witness the supernatural. Interact with the supernatural. Denies it exists.

I could go on and on, but nobody likes to read these days so I'll just stop and say, wait for it on DVD and watch it to pass the time. The Other Side of the Door, may scare the average horror viewer, but it's tepid waters, for the hardcore lovers of the genre.