At the Devil's Door

The opening of this film is very slow and although it builds some important story it didn't draw me in until Vera (Naya Rivera) takes over as the main character from there it really starts to develop the story and actually becomes a pretty interesting film, it has little in the way of gore for a horror film and relies mostly on atmosphere, the occasional jump scare and some paranormal body manipulation. It must also be said that the ending is a little anti-climatic (although a simple post credit scene showcasing the future ramifications would have helped)

A fragmented bundle of story pieces, At the Devil's Door doesn't add up as the sum of its parts.

The film effectively opens with a runaway teenage girl in the arms of a teenage boy in what looks to be a mobile home in the desert. He takes her to play a shell game unlike she's ever played and wins $500. While at her home later she is viciously attacked by an unknown force. Fast forward to Leigh, a hardworking real estate agent trying to sell the very house the girl in the last scene was attacked. While surveying the house she comes across the girl, who we believe is the daughter of the couple selling the house, and becomes the target of the ominous supernatural force; unknowingly bringing her sister Vera into its sights as well.

That convoluted summary and plot description is due to the plot being a loosely jumbled mess. To call At The Devil's Door a narrative would be an offense to all other narratives because it is so discordant from a typical plot. Nicholas McCarthy desperately and ineffectually tries to splice the tale together loosely by connecting the satanic undertone throughout. For a film marketing itself as a 'horror' it shies away from the truly terrifying aspects of demonic rage as a satanic being clamors to take a human form and is underwhelmingly tame.

At The Devil's Door is unnecessarily overcomplicated and contrived in trying to be different from typical demonic possession films. Incoherent perplexing chunks of the film should have been amputated and reevaluated. Editors are resigned to fade to black scenes to attempt to piece together a film with no cohesive plot direction. The fragmented plot and poorly conceptualized screenplay by McCarthy is only highlighted further by the forced dialogue between the characters.

Further, there are three protagonists. There is a formula to horrors and supernatural thrillers, a very simple formula, you must have one clear protagonist for the audience to follow. Ashley Rickards is great as the disturbed teen assaulted in the first scene who menacingly skulks about, tormented by the decision she makes to allow this dark force to enter her life. The next protagonist Leigh, played by Catalina Sandino Moreno, unfortunately gets featured far too much and further splinters the story. The film could have contained a single scene with her as a minor character in order to connect Rickards' plot to Vera, the sister, played by Naya Rivera. If it were not for the sufficient performances of Rickards and Rivera this film would be unwatchable. Once Vera is the primary focus for the film it picks up slightly but pathetically shuffles its way to a weak finale.

At The Devil's Door is a bland and disjointed interpretation of the hellish thrillers of yesteryear when humanity was afraid of losing its soul to Satan. With no clear plot and no serious scares it expediently fast forwards through the various shorts attempting to be key plot events to an ending the audience can not care or be invested.

Saw 'Home', being fond of horror regardless of budget (even if not my favourite genre) and being intrigued by the idea which was reasonably different when it comes to recent viewings of horror. Being behind on my film watching and reviewing, with a long to watch and review list that keeps getting longer, it took me a while to get round to watching and reviewing it.

Giving 'Home' a fair chance with being interest and apprehension, it turned out to be far better than expected. Won't say that 'Home' is a great film because it isn't and the potential, while not wasted, is not fully lived up to. Considering the large number of films seen recently being mediocre and less and wasting potential, was expecting worse and was relieved that while wanting in a fair few areas it was actually one of my better recent low-budget viewings.

Starting with the positives, generally the production values could have been much worse. There is a real sense of eeriness, foreboding and a decently stylish atmosphere, and it makes the most of the confined and at times effectively claustrophobic setting. The music is also suitably haunting and manages to not be too intrusive, likewise with the sound not being too obvious (a bugbear of mine with low-budget viewings recently).

There is tension, suspense and genuine creepiness. The acting is better than average, with the three leads carrying the film pretty decently.

Would have liked however more tension and suspense and for some of the scares to be more creative and less trying-too-hard to the point of cheesiness. The dialogue is cheesy and awkward generally.

Found that the story could have been executed better too. Too many parts are uneventful, the narrative structure is not always coherent and it can feel padded, not to mention an ending that perplexes in its anti-climactic and muddled convolution. There are exceptions to the better than expected production values, the effects are shoddy and the editing could have been tighter.

Overall, better than expected but didn't blow me away. 5/10 Bethany Cox

A young couple visits the guy's uncle. He's got $500 if the girl plays a game. She picks a happy face pin from a box and has to guess under which of the cups it'll be after the creepy old man spins the cups around. She guesses right 3 times and the third time the pin has an ash cross over it. The uncle tells her she's been chosen and to go to a crossroad and say her name so "he" will know who she is and then gives her the $500.

Back at home the girl hears something and she's lifted in the air and thrown around. She tries to bury the money, then burn it but it keeps appearing in her drawer.

Next we meet a pretty real estate agent. She has a sister who's an artist and is about to do an exhibition. The agent visits an empty house she's going to sell. There she sees the girl from the intro. She tells the owners who think it may their missing daughter who ran away with her boyfriend. But then it turns out the daughter is found. The agent discovers that the girl she's seeing is someone else who committed suicide. But then, the unseen force kills her.

Now her sister, the artist, picks things up. She interviews one of the suicide's friends who tells her all sorts of info on the girl. Then the artist is attacked by the force and ends up in the hospital. When she wakes up from a coma she's told that she's pregnant. During the ultrasound she sees an evil face on the screen and demands the doctors take out the kid. Several years later she visits her creepy-looking daughter.

I had high hopes for At the Devil's Door. I enjoyed the writer/director's previous effort The Pact, although he's yet another male who insists on making movies without any significant male characters. Is that what it takes these days to make it in Hollywood? Unfortunately this movie is a step in the wrong direction. The strongest female, Ashley Rickards, gets only the secondary role of the intro girl, while the weakest actress get the more significant role. The main problem though is the nonsensical story. A movie about a demon looking to procreate should make for a good horror movie actually. But here it's told in too roundabout a way. You can't really care about most of the characters including the main character, which is a terrible flaw. Like most movies, this one, too, goes eventually on mute with no one saying much of anything, certainly the demon doesn't say a whole lot, he doesn't even make a sound.

That said, Nicholas McCarthy is a good director, perhaps not so much when it comes to telling a story, but definitely when it comes to shooting a movie. And he goes for subtlety instead of hyper explicitness--always a good idea in horror. So when we see the demon, it's usually at a distance, unfocused in the background, or in a mirror reflection. That does make the demon less menacing, which is why he should have been given more of a voice. At the Devil's Door is a movie that had potential but most if it was unrealized.

At The Devil's Door is a mixed bag of horror elements, there are some great scares and a strong atmosphere, but then there are parts of the story that just seem irrelevant. As for the better aspects of the movie, the opening scene is phenomenal, it does what every movie should do, it hooks the viewer in a matter of minutes. After those great opening minutes, the atmosphere in the movie is nice and thick, and it lasts for just about the entire movie. But the atmosphere can't save the movie from a very odd and spotty narrative timeline that jumps all over the place between past and present for no apparent reason. The movie is the tale of three characters and the middle character is just filler to get from the first girl to the last girl. The second act is where the story starts to get muddy and the excitement level drops significantly, and the questions start to rise.

And as for the end (which most people have a problem with), I have to agree, very anticlimactic and disappointing. Like I said above, the final minutes of the movie just ruins the ride, just a lack of logic on the characters decision is just disappointing. At The Devil's Door was the type of movie I really wanted to like more than I did, but looking back, there are just too many empty scenes that don't add up. The whole movie jumps through time like crazy, from the past to the present, then like 7 years into the future, which definitely makes you wonder why a character waited that long to do so? And if you can't get past the middle girl in the film and turn the movie off, you're not really missing much of a conclusion, let alone anything you haven't seen before in the horror genre.

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