Director: Billy Chase Goforth
Year: 2019
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
After moving into a new neighborhood, a family finds a strange antique door in the middle of the woods and takes it home to use in their house, but when they begin to experience strange occurrences they believe they’ve brought an ancient evil entity into the house and race to save their son from the being.
Review:
This was an enjoyable if flawed genre effort. One of its better features is the strong build-up that occurs here, as this one manages to get quite chilling rather easily. From the innocuous yet eerie manner of stumbling upon the door to how the psychics’ behavior has changed after and the seemingly innocent yet chilling situations that occur around the house or discovered through her research, this gives off a rather nice buildup of creepy ideas and images. When the inevitable occurs and their kid disappears, it rings far greater than just a simple child kidnapping due to this fine build-up throughout the first half.
From there, this one generates a lot of fun focusing on the ritual they have to perform to get him back. Realizing and accepting that he’s come under the threat from the supernatural entities, the entire final half consists of some rather fun times here featuring the series of occult rituals that they have to perform in order to carry out their plan. It’s quite intriguing and unique to watch it play out where the focus is away from the house to out in the woods which has some fun ideas at play and a rather interesting climax which is quite dark and unique, adding to this one quite well and giving it a lot to like for the most part.
There are some minor but noticeable flaws here. The main issue is the seemingly obvious and unnaturally moronic decision to bring it home in the first place, as it looks outright dangerous anyway, the manner of coming across it doesn’t make any sense why they’d be drawn to it without any suggestive influence and their conversation earlier about doorways makes taking it even dumber. There’s also the obvious low-budget nature of the finale where it tends to forgo a lot of the actual on-screen trickery to pull it off, hiding all the supernatural action behind camera angles and obvious filters to hide what’s going on. All of these tend to hold it back.
Overview: ***/5
With some creepy ideas and imagery that gives off a far darker and suspenseful tone than expected even over the abhorrent stupidity and obvious limitations on display, this is a fine enough if slightly problematic entry. Give it a look if you’re into this kind of low-budget entry find this one intriguing while those who don’t fall into that style would heed caution.
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