When a horror film is called, The Door, it’s safe to assume it could go just about anywhere. Is it a door to Hell? A door to another dimension? Could be anything really, and that’s exactly what we get behind The Door.

The story is simple and undeniably intriguing. Owen is assigned to watch a door for twelve hours, making sure it doesn’t open. If he makes it through the night successfully he gets $500. Simple, right? Not so much when Owen’s eager group of friends show up against his wishes to crash his first night at work. After the drunkest of the group seemingly disappears behind said door, the rest demand Owen let them inside to go after her. From here, things enter borderline haunted house territory as, like fools, they split up and each make their own horrific discoveries.

The movie never exactly pinpoints just what in the hell is going on, and once several plot twists and connections are revealed, it all feels a bit anticlimactic. But I do applaud its efforts in endlessly trying to fuck with its audience. There are entire sequences that leave you unsure what to make of; did they really happen, or were they merely someone’s imagination? This heavily comes into play when the characters themselves begin questioning their own sanity, and there were several times I felt the need to go back and rewatch certain scenes. It also helped that most of the characters were rational thinking human beings, who reacted as most people would in such a situation; everyone was genuinely scared shitless, as would be the case in reality. Taking things even a step further, the two most frightened characters were the two males.

The Door is one of those movies that gets in and gets out. It doesn’t waste time setting up the plot with needless fluff, nor does it attempt to rationalize what we’ve just witnessed. It does what it does and you’re either along for the ride or you’re not.. It’s no classic by any means, but it is unique in its storytelling and does things I never would have expected it to do.  Worth a watch.

 

The Door 2014 Review: Opens Up A Unique Experience