The Cellar Door

I have to admit that I'm generally not a fan of this genre so I was not looking forward to the screening I had to attend. James DuMont's superb performance made the experience well worth my time.

Every once in a while you get to see a performance that reminds you why you go to the movies and James DuMont's performance it subtle, deep and compelling.

I was also glad to see the film had some substance beyond what I originally thought. It has a lot to say about isolation and need the for love. Both of which DuMont captures vividly. Making an otherwise awful character sympathetic. No small feat with a role like this and one that could have very easily been overplayed.

Please don't let my going on about DuMont detract anything at all from Michelle Tomlinson's wonderful performance. The two actors are equally matched in this clever cat and mouse game of love and survival.

Now I think it would be great to see them together in a romantic comedy.

I was glad I saw this movie and I think you will be as well.

THE CELLAR DOOR is another rubbishy independent horror flick that's content to copy films that have come previously instead of offering anything new. Once again the main character is a poorly-acting psychopath (amusingly, this time around he's a chubby guy called Herman) who keeps a couple of women captive in his house. That's all there is to it.

The film is saddled with awful camera-work, which shakes all over the place to little effect, and attempts to bring it into the 'torture porn' category, which I didn't care for. The acting of the female characters is all screechy and irritating, and the scripting is so goofy that I often laughed instead of being moved or frightened. The ending, when it eventually comes, is particularly disappointing.

In California, the psychopath Herman (James DuMont) stalks the young Rudy (Michelle Tomlinson) and her mate Christa (Heather Sconyers) along a day and a night and finally he chooses Rudy to be his next victim. He breaks in their house and uses ether to kidnap Rudy, bringing her to the basement of his house. When she awakes, she discovers that she is imprisoned in a wooden cage in a cellar and subjected to sick games of the deranged Herman. Rudy decides to play the game looking for a chance to escape from Herman's claw.

I do not know how many times I have seen the storyline of "The Cellar Door"; maybe the original version of this theme (a man that abducts a woman for his own pleasure) is William Wyler's masterpiece "The Collector", which has become extremely violent and sadistic as years go by. I recall recently watching at least the franchise "Saw", "Captivity", "Broken" and "Sportkill" that are rip-off of the classic storyline. However, I liked "The Cellar Door" because the writer Christopher Nelson and the director Matt Zettell were able to make an extremely low-budget theatrical movie supported by a solid screenplay and mostly by top-notch performances of the unknown James DuMont and Michelle Tomlinson. Their mouse-and-cat game is great and in the end it was worthwhile watching this simple but effective film that works perfectly on DVD. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Porão" ("The Cellar")

Now I understand this film was made some time ago but I just got around to watching it and reading IMDb for some insight, I loved all of your opinions and critiquing, it was very helpful, without people like you I would watch films and waste my money (most of the time).

But I finally watched this film after finding it on NETFlIX and my review goes as follows. Enjoy!

I really don't think this is a bad film, If your in the mood for a no brains, relaxing evening snuggled up ready to sink your teeth into a new cheesy slasher film.

But just one question. What is with the stickycam video quality? Are they just trying to imitate the shaky cam like in big budget action movies? I really don't understand. This film would of looked and been so much better if they would of just filmed it normal. Maybe with a little bit of floating atmospheric camera work still in it.

But with the sticky cam film quality I find this a little bit too much. Just make the damn movie without shaking the camera like your having a seizure, or don't make a film like this, like your watching a webcam through a 14.4bps dial up modem! When the hell did this kind of camera work become cool? It's not! It's so nauseating, I want to puke when I see it!

These stupid DP's these days, think that shaking the camera in an action scene like your having a sudden earthquake or seizure is so cool! They also think by doing this it adds intensity, fear,or excitement!

Well it don't all it does is make everyone think that they been drinking beer in the desert for 12 hrs!

Please no more shakycam or in this case it's younger brother sticky cam! Now I understand that the writers, and mainly the director wants us to feel what the characters in this film are feeling, but doing it through shakycam syndrome, or sticky digicam, well I've only seen one film where that works, and that was Saving Private Ryan, when this kind of camera work was first played with. They only used this in scenes with gun fire making impact, or a lot of explosions going off. This is the only time this style of filming works.

Don't use it for fight scenes, because you can't see who's hitting who, and don't use this style in your film, just because you think the director of photography is funny because he's been having a seizure for the last three months while filming.

There are many other ways to show emotions in a film. Whatever emotion that may be! Just ask David Lynch. He seems to create emotion through colour and just the score of the film. Do you ever see him shooting a film while he's in full on seizure mode! No you don't!

Thanks for reading.

I admit I kind of liked Broken for its atmosphere and cold feeling although it was going pretty much nowhere. I don't know why this movie is called Broken 2... except for the crazy guy kidnaps woman they don't have so much in common. This time the crazy guy is a pathetic loser who puts women in his cellar and cages them to have smalltalk with them and collect their feces. Obviously the movie tries to be smart and psychological with the caged woman and crazy guy interacting but at no point its getting any clear whats behind crazy guy Herman's acting. The script is once again a mess and covers stupidity on all levels... stupid victims running around with weapons just to get captured again after leaving them behind, 60 Minutes of pseudo-psychological boredom and then when the going gets tough the doorbell rings, the captive is kept in a cage for weeks and still got shiny bright white teeth... and the ending, oh my god.. crap ending, even crappier music. Its like the fourth movie in a row I saw that doesn't have a proper ending. The acting was OK but thats about it. This movie has no atmosphere, no suspense, no gore and a script like one big hole. Avoid.