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.
