Right at Your Door

In Los Angeles, Brad (Rory Cochrane) and his wife Lexi (Mary McCormack) live in the suburb and are in love for each other. Brad is an unemployed musician and Lexi is financially supporting the family. She wakes up in the morning and heads in her convertible to the highway to work downtown.

Brad listens to the news that dirty bombs have just blown up in Los Angeles in a terrorist attack and the authorities warning people seal off doors, windows and any opening and stay home. The desperate Brad does not respect the curfew and drives his car to downtown, but he does not succeed in crossing the police barriers. He returns home and the worker Alvaro (Tony Perez) of his next door neighbor requests protection to Brad. They seal themselves off in the house and listen to the radio about the danger of the unknown chemicals and the panic of the population with the hospitals overcrowded. Out of the blue, Lexi returns home covered of chemical ashes. Brad has to come up to a decision about the unexpected return: should he open or not their house?

"Right at Your Door" is a tense and scary low budget movie by Chris Gorak. The movie is like a theater play and is supported by the outstanding screenplay, magnificent direction and top-notch performances of Mary McCormack and Rory Cochrane. The twist in the end is absolutely unexpected and certainly makes the viewer think a lot about the attitude of Brad and how realistic this story is. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Toque de Recolher" ("Curfew")

Right At Your Door taps into the current climate of fear caused by international terrorism, with a tale of a 'dirty' bomb attack on downtown Los Angeles that results in a cloud of toxic dust engulfing nearby residential areas.

Focusing on a married couple caught up in the disaster, the film seeks to wring tension from a rather inspired and decidedly awkward situation which sees husband Brad (Rory Cochrane) safely sealed inside his house (as instructed by the authorities), when his contaminated (and now potentially deadly) wife Lexi (Mary McCormack) turns up outside, demanding to be let in.

Such an intense situation requires class-A dialogue, top notch acting, and flawless plotting from start to finish in order to succeed, and, at first, it seems as though Right At Your Door might have what it takes: the promising opening, in which Brad gradually realises what is happening and then desperately attempts to locate his wife in all of the confusion, is well realised.

Unfortunately, as the film progresses and the action becomes concentrated on the dilemma faced by the terrified Brad and Lexi, too many mundane scenes of chit-chat, the inclusion of a couple of pointless characters, and some very ill-considered moments that really take some swallowing, ultimately mean that the movie fails to maintain its tension.

Towards the end, obviously sensing that his script desperately needs a boot up the rear, writer/director Chris Gorak tacks on a last minute 'shock' twist ending, but it is so far fetched that it is unable to save the film from being yet another example of a good idea let down by a poorly constructed script.

It doesn't take a big budget to make a good movie about what it would be like to be in a big city in a terror attack. Terror is after all, a personal emotion. Whatever the state of your relationship at that moment, that's where the picture freezes. You're not fully moved in, you hate your family, you had a fight... that's where things stand when the bombs go off. And if you're not blasted or burned or crushed in the initial blast, and if you're moderately resourceful, you'll find a way to survive -- for a while at least. And then you hope the 'authorities' do the right thing and come to save you. If you've thought about all of these things, you will appreciate how Chris Gorak plays it all out. This is not a movie for everyone. If you want all your questions answered, a big studio popcorn movie is probably more your style. But if you appreciate the exercise of putting yourself in the protagonist's shoes, this is a great ride.

I had a chance to catch this at SUNDANCE.

It was probably the best movie I saw at the festival, though I only saw a handful of other films.

It's a solid debut by Chris Gorak and not a waste of 90 minutes. The setup is very good, as is the pacing and cinematography. They made the most out of what little money they had.

I have to say that at times it bordered on horrifying, and could've been classified as a horror film if some of those moments continued. Since I've lived in Los Angeles for about five years, I was particularly affected by the scenario. It's a very real possibility LA could be hit with a dirty bomb, and the repercussions would probably be similar to what's in the film.

It does suffer from some holes and stretches in logic and performance, but most thrillers do, so that's not necessarily a slam.

I can't say I liked the ending, but I was gripped by the story and the way it was shot.

A solid thriller.

The film opens with an unemployed musician, played by Rory Cochrane who was great in A Scanner Darkly but can't seem to flesh out his hero here past a certain point, showing a tender servile nature by making a cup of latté for his wife Lexi, played by Mary McCormack, who is still in bed. She soon leaves for work and Cochrane is at home alone. Time passes and over the radio he hears that numerous alleged dirty bombs have been set off across downtown Los Angeles. He sees significant quantities of smoke mounting from the city center. His instantaneous judgment is for his wife and her wellbeing so he drives in the direction of the city center to find her.

While it is a small-budgeted dramatic film more than anything it may seem to have pretensions about being, Right at Your Door shows several real matters Homeland Security planners are under immense pressure to handle like the interference with telecommunication because of so many calls, or the worried well who assemble to hospitals and emergency shelters and overpower emergency services, a great deal about the threat of contaminated people coming into hospitals and the necessity for facilities in which to work on decontamination. There are troubles through risk communication to the general public, the dilemma of enforcing containment after a biological attack, and the potential benefit of the Postal Service to circulate medications. It is resourceful to weave these predicaments into a dramatic narrative, a fundamentally theatrical one at that, one that is dialogue-driven more than anything.

However this standard LA-based twist-dependent thriller also uses many erroneous facets like, frankly, the use of the term "dirty bomb," or a biological agent used as an additive in a bomb, and Homeland Security recommending for people to seal a single room sooner than the entire home. Even though this paranoid thriller maintains as a vital element to the story that a virus can develop and become more lethal just by being confined, a virus needs the infection of a living thing to reproduce.

Right At Your Door taps into the present feeling of apprehension brought about by worldwide terrorism, with a fable of an attack on downtown LA that causes a haze of toxic dust overcoming adjacent suburbs, where many people generally feel the safest. Concentrating on a married couple mired in the catastrophe, Chris Gorak's script aims to squeeze frantic drama from a somewhat clever and unquestionably thorny circumstance which perceives Cochrane securely sealed inside his house as instructed by people in charge, when his infected and now possibly lethal wife McCormack arrives insisting to be allowed to enter. Such a strong dramatic conflict needs dialogue, acting, and plotting that are just as strong all the time to make it.

Alas, as the exactly ninety-minute-long film advances and the conflict grows determined upon the catch-22 challenging the fate of the two petrified leads, an excess of humdrum scenes of inert dialogue and some especially half-baked moments that put a strain on suspension of disbelief in the end lead the movie to fail to sustain its tautness.