The Open Door

I will start by going straight to the elephant in the room... the movie is BORING and drag so long before anything actually happen. When it finally did, its not terrible, but it goes out super fast and you can't remove the bad feeling of having sit an hour into boring "pretend to be teenagers" just going on with their lives in a very boring way.

Outside the lead, the characters are either not fleshed out and just serve as bodycount or they are very unlikable.

The set-up when the "horror" finally start is a mundane and basic as it could and despite a few "tries" the movie is never scary.

If this had been a 25-35 minutes short as part of an anthology movie and started when the "wishes" are actually made, while speeding up a bit til we get to the actual horror part, it could had been alright, like a 5 or 6 out of 10.

But as it is this movie is just so boring and does not really have any redeeming qualities. Acting is meh, the music is meh, the kills are basics, the movie is not scary, the characters are shallow, its bottom tier direct to video from the 2000s. This is a 3.5 out of 10 that i am sadly gonna round to a 3. I kept popping up the on screen menu to see how far i was into it.

Angelica, upset that she's grounded and can't hook up with this one boy at a party that night is sulking. That is until her catty "best friend" sends pics to her cell phone showing the boy being unfaithful. She takes it upon herself to call a ominous radio show where she vents and wishes certain people would leave her alone, little realizing the dire consequences that she has set in motion.

It all boils down to merely another light-weight 'teen scream' flick with practically no scares, hammy over-acting and clichés galore. Of course with that said, for its sub-genre and my more or less general disdain for teeny-bopper 'horror', I didn't find it absolutely awful. Yes that's the most positive thing that you'll get out of me in regards to this movie.

In The Open Door, a teenage girl named Anjelica (played by Cathrine Georges) is stuck at home after being grounded... forcing her to miss a party she'd been planning to go to.

As her parents leave to have fun away from home, Anjelica sulks, and decides to listen to the radio. As the night progresses, she finds herself listening to a pirate radio show that runs only once a month - the night of a full moon. Fed up with her putrid, steroid-chugging friends, she decides to call into the station, and speak with the prophet/DJ.

The Oracle, as she calls herself, answers at the station, and asks Anjelica to make a wish for anything she wants. Anjelica is hysterical at the actions of her assumed boyfriend, and hastily wishes for him and everyone around him to leave her alone, among other things. Soon enough she starts hearing and seeing horrible things as a result of her wish. And her friends aren't exactly happy with her wishes.

While watching this, I could certainly tell that the cast was having a ton of fun when they made The Open Door. When the cast is enjoying themselves, the viewer can relax knowing that they're going to be entertained. I wasn't entirely clear on what was happening to Anjelica's friends... at times they looked like zombies, not to mention acting like them. But when I realized what they were really up to, I was pleased with the story turn.

Most horror movies in this vein would take the familiar path of having one guy carrying an over-sized knife, on a path of bloody destruction. I appreciate that The Open Door takes none of the familiar clichéd paths that everyone's grown extremely tired of. The effects are solid... people are flying everywhere, bodies are set on fire, eyes are glossed over. All of this is well done for an independent film.

Perhaps the one fault of the movie is the ending. I know that it's very hard to craft a good ending to go with a great movie - especially hard for a horror/thriller. There's only a handful of ways to end a movie where so many die. The ending is a *flash-crang* scene, if you'll allow me a new term for a scene you'd find in most every scare film out there. Ending a fully original movie with something I've seen before is a slightly disappointing last impression to leave.

I don't know about you, but I'm getting pretty tired of 30-year-olds pretending to be teen aged clichés. And this steaming cinematic extrusion packs in most of Canoga Park's middle-aged bartenders and wait staff into one long, unintentionally hilarious carica-turd of high school archetypes terrorized by...oh who cares? I mean, really, if you can stop laughing at grown adults pretending to be misunderstood adolescents, you'd be bored by the plodding mash-up of the Wishmaster, When a Stranger Calls, and a plethora of cursed-media movies (like The Ring). Seems the producers spent their entire budget on by-the-numbers post- production effects you've seen a million times before, and stock sound effects.

In the end, it's an unintentionally entertaining wad of poor acting and amateurish direction, wrapping disconnected plot ideas and an obtuse sense of contemporary dialog. If you're as high as the producers who green-lit this thing, then this is the movie for you. Just try not to wonder how "high school students" have male pattern baldness.

In THE OPEN DOOR, Angelica (Catherine Munden) listens to a mobile, pirate radio station -999 FM!- that only broadcasts during the full moon. After spending hours listening to a host known as "The Oracle", Angelica learns to use her mental powers to get what she wants.

What could possibly go wrong?

The story is along the lines of THE MONKEY'S PAW, illustrating how getting what we think we want in the short-term may have long-term, unexpected consequences.

Ms. Munden is convincing in her vengeful role, and the radio DJ is pretty creepy. Recommended for fans of bizarre, supernatural movies...