Halloween Suggestion: The Door

I love browsing through free movies available on Amazon Prime, but admittedly, there's a lot of junk on there, especially in the horror genre -- a lot of formulaic, low-budget, unimaginative schlock that isn't worth your time. Patrick McBrearty's The Door is definitely low budget, but "unimaginative schlock" it ain't. McBrearty uses his budgetary limitations and turns them into advantages, to create a quietly compelling, wholly original story.

    The movie opens in a cafe, where a superficial viewing might misinterpret the dialogue between Matt and Owen as equally superficial plot exposition. It's explicitly stated, for example, that Matt and Owen are best friends, that Owen is broke, and that he's worried by the fact that he doesn't have any money to buy his girlfriend a gift for her birthday party that night.

    But director/ writer McBrearty is sneaky at how he slips some character development in here. Matt's preoccupation with his cell phone in this scene isn't just another "kids and their phones these days!" scene, it illustrates how little Matt is interested in Owen's concerns. It's equally telling when the scene ends and Matt, acting magnanimous, says "I got this!" as he picks up the check. Well, yeah, Matt's the only one who ate anything, but that doesn't stop him from thinking he's awesome for picking up the check.

    Matt is not a good friend.

    Desperate for money, Owen seems to stumble on to good fortune when he breaks up a mugging, and the grateful would-be victim offers Owen a job as a reward.

    "I'm a very rich man!" the businessman explains matter-of-factly as he gives Owen a bundle of cash as an advance, and if the dialogue seems so on-the-nose that it strikes as lazy screenwriting, that's okay -- the businessman's odd behavior is actually an intentional clue that something's not quite right.

    Owen's new job is certainly an odd one, reminiscent of many of the "creepy-pastas" so popular online in the past several years. As IMDb explains Owen's job, "$500 a night. 5 nights a week. All Owen has to do is wear a security uniform, sit in a chair in an otherwise abandoned warehouse, and make sure that an ominous door is never opened."

    Nobody will tell Owen what's on the other side of the door, and when he asks "but what happens if the door does open?", the answer is always the same: "It won't." Owen's no fool, and recognizes a non-answer when he hears, one, and also quickly figures out that anybody willing to pay $500 a night to make sure a door doesn't open, isn't as confident as they claim to be when they keep assuring him that it will never happen. But $500 is $500.

    After Owen is repeatedly told that his entire job is to make sure that the door must not be opened under any circumstances, and repeatedly assured that he's got nothing to worry about because the door never does open, he is, of course, immediately presented with a variety of circumstances that require him to open the door. A mysterious delivery shows up in the dead of night, with Owen's co-workers insisting that they need to drop off the contents of the box behind the door. Owen gets permission from somebody on the phone, and the voice seems to be that of his employer, but is it? When the deliverymen/ security officers return from behind the mysterious door, they are bloodied and out of breath, and, of course, continue the new tradition of refusing to answer any of Owen's questions.

    The story is really set into motion when a group of Owen's friends show up, unannounced, uninvited, unwelcome, and in varying degrees of intoxication. Their first instinct of course, is to try to get behind the door despite the fact that they know damn well it might cost Owen his desperately needed job. His so-called "friends" dismiss his concerns, make empty promises about how he won't get in trouble, do everything they can to jeopardize his job, and act like he's the jerk when he asks them to leave. Forget about ghosts and goblins, this is a horror film about toxic relationships.

    And yet it's so much more. When the drunkest of the group, Mia, manages to accidentally lock herself behind the door, that's when the fun starts in earnest. In search of Mia behind the forbidden door, Owen and his friends explore an abandoned, dark, maze-like warehouse, and here's where McBrearty really starts to shine.

    "Is it haunted" someone asks at one point, and the warehouse very well may be, but if it is, it's no typical Hollywood haunting with jump scares or crazy visual effects. No, McBrearty is more interested in scaring you with mind games, and damned if he doesn't turn out to be a master. McBrearty and his audio team must have had a field day, filling the soundtrack with half-heard footsteps, shuffling, and whispers, and yet equally unexplained loud crashes.

    "Did you hear that?" people keep asking each other, and the answer is usually "no." If the friend next to you says he didn't hear quiet whispering, okay, that's creepy, but understandable. If there's a loud bang and he insists he didn't hear that either, that's damn near terrifying. What's going on here? Are Owen and his friends lying to each other for some inexplicable reason? Are they hallucinating these noises? What about the shadows? Are they hallucinatory or real, ominous, or simply a trick of the lighting?

    At the risk of a minor spoiler, one of my favorite aspects of McBrearty's constant mind games is the "crushed can scene." Olivia insists she saw Matt stomp on a soda can and crush it. Matt insists he didn't. Neither one of them has any apparent reason to lie about something so trivial. Is one of them lying anyway? If so, why? Did something that looked like Matt crush the can?

    McBrearty has fun with presenting these weird questions and holding back on the answers as long as possible, causing Owen and his friends to alternately doubt each other's trustworthiness and their own sanity. It's a twist on the old "fear of the unknown," because what McBrearty is reveling in here is something more insidiously ill-defined, fear of uncertainty. Fear of the unknown has its limitations, because at least you can try to force yourself to accept that you don't know something. You know what's behind the door is a mystery, you know there's no way to predict what's around a corner or in a dark room. But . . . . what if you're not even sure of what you don't know and what you do? "I saw him crush the can, so I know he's lying" -- but then why is he so adamant that he didn't? "I know there's someone in the next room, because I heard someone banging around in there" -- but then why didn't anybody else hear it? And so on.

    Yes, the budget could be measured in the hundreds of dollars rather than in the millions. But don't let that scare you away from this unique (and scary!) exercise in creativity.