At the Devil's Door

Taken on their own, there are a lot of little things to like about "At the Devil's Door." It's competently directed, but not flashy. There are some really nice creature make up effects. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least two visuals creepy enough to remember two days later. At least one jump scare worked for me because it came out of nowhere.

The problem is, none of these things really add up to anything special. "At the Devil's Door" suffers from something I just made up: Handful-of-Interesting-Visuals Disease, or HIV for short. Wait … that may already be taken. Whatever. HIV is where a filmmaker suddenly musters enough inspiration to come up with a neat shot or two, but then doesn't have much else to build around them. What this movie lacks is likable characters, believable dialog, a coherent timeline of events and — when all is said and done and the credits start to roll — a story worth telling. The story jumps from character to character all willy-nilly, never giving us the chance to get to know any of them. Months, then years, go by with the flash of a title card. Once, for no particular reason, the movie jumps backwards in time. Words spill from character's mouths with little thought as to why they are saying them or what they actually mean. There's a bit of clever misdirection at one point in the story, but the reveal doesn't really mean all that much because nothing happens due to the protagonist having the wrong information. It's just there for to make the audience go, "oh." I'm shaking my head; that's just bad writing.

While I'm generally a fan of backdrop horror … that is, scary stuff going on in the background of scenes … this movie relies on it almost exclusively. I don't have enough fingers to count out the number of times we get a shot of something in the foreground while scary stuff goes on just out of focus. Or, the trick where a character walks by a window or mirror and there's something standing there. These are occasionally accompanied by music stings, but only when the character happens to notice whatever it is.

I'm also not sure the ending of this movie makes a whole lot of sense. It certainly isn't satisfying, but it may also be completely nonsensical.

All in all, not a waste of time, but not exactly a great way to spend it, either.

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.

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)

This movie does not take long to start off, it actually got me of guard near the start of the movie,

As the movies goes on, it kind flows really well, it tends, to have right mix balance of decent creepy scenes and a few jump scenes , those scenes are really good .

I loved the power cut science was really good, a tad creepy and hospital scene with scan , loved that scene,

The only downside , that there were no ending to the movie, they did want to finish the story , there were no cliffhanger or anything , just ended with no payoff

The acting was decent not great

Really good movie 7 out of 10

I sort of appreciate what this was trying to do, honestly. I just wish it had done it better. The film really isn't the typical mainstream slasher/horror flick, and it knows how to build atmosphere... to a point. It just slogs throughout most of its running time, and it really seems like it goes nowhere. The biggest crime a horror film could make is be boring, and at times, this is incredibly dull. I like the destination and I like how it doesn't feel the need to speed up its pace, but the really thin screenplay and some questionable acting make this not very good. It's a pity too, because it really does have some nice scenes and atmosphere.