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At the Devil's Door

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At the Devil's Door (2014)

March. 09,2014
|
4.8
|
R
| Horror
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When ambitious young real estate agent Leigh is asked to sell a house with a checkered past, she crosses paths with a disturbed girl whom she learns is the runaway daughter of the couple selling the property. When Leigh tries to intervene and help her, she becomes entangled with a supernatural force that soon pulls Leigh's artist sister Vera into its web - and has sinister plans for both of them.

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Reviews

Scanialara
2014/03/09

You won't be disappointed!

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Protraph
2014/03/10

Lack of good storyline.

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Livestonth
2014/03/11

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

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Zandra
2014/03/12

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

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maggiemaggamuff-69556
2014/03/13

I wish there would be a sequel. The story spans over decades and is very well written. If you're into horror / thriller films, you will be sucked into the atmosphere and story line and you'll keep watching again and again to be taken back to that place of mystery and suspense, seeing things you missed the last time you watched. If you liked The Ring, you'll love this as far as atmosphere and suspense.

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adamarmour
2014/03/14

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.

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Argemaluco
2014/03/15

I liked The Pact, director and screenwriter Nicholas McCarthy's first film, very much, and that's why I was very interested in watching At the Devil's Door, his following movie. And even though At the Devil's Door is very inferior to The Pact, McCarthy's ability to create suspense and terror with efficiency and elegance keeps being noticed. At the Devil's Door offers a growing tension, some good shocks and a constant sensation of anxiety. Unfortunately, the screenplay changes its course with too much frequency and it can't decide itself for a concrete direction. Everything starts with an enigmatic prologue in which the young Hannah participates on a strange ritual, something which brings context to Leigh's story and her difficulty to sell a "haunted house" (or whatever it is). Then, we witness long flashbacks of Hannah and the consequences of the ritual; then, the focus of attention switches to Leigh's sister; then, the story jumps 8 months; afterwards, 6 years... and well, that's enough to describe the confusing structure of At the Devil's Door, which includes enough tangents to fill in three movies. But with so much material compressed in an hour and a half, it's difficult for us to integrate into the story. On the positive side, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Naya Rivera and Ashley Rickards bring solid performances in their roles. To sum up, At the Devil's Door is very far from the level of The Pact, but at least, it confirms McCarthy's ability to handle the tools of horror; unfortunately, his work as a screenwriter wasn't totally satisfactory in this case. Nevertheless, that doesn't avoid me from giving a moderate recommendation to At the Devil's Door as a decent horror film.

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Peter Pluymers
2014/03/16

When you expect a kind of "The Exorcist" variant with a person possessed by a demon, ranting and raving while being chained to a bed, vomiting green slime, reciting incoherent fragments of text in a foreign language that he/she doesn't master and spinning his/her head around in a supernatural way, then you're wasting your time with "At the Devil's door", because this is not that type of film. But if you are a lover of the more subtle horror genre with a nasty undertone and a sinister, menacing atmosphere created by the use of shadows, moving objects and a constant palpable threat, then this is a must see.Of course there will be grumbling about the lack of depth of the characters and of real scares. Firstly, I think a horror isn't always successful by using irritating artificial frights (as in "The Quite Ones" where they used deafening sound effects) or by excessive use of gore elements. To me a horror is brilliant when, even if these elements are applied to the minimum, and it still has a nasty and devilish atmosphere. And you don't need profundity to create that. I suggest you watch a Shakespearean drama when you're into that. You also don't expect scary moments while watching a romcom.It all starts with a teenage girl called Hannah (Ashley Rickards) who makes the mistake to accept the invitation of her boyfriend to play an innocent game and as a reward gets 500 $ for doing that. In a ramshackle caravan somewhere in the middle of a desert, an eccentric, horrid guy plays a cup game with her and comes to the conclusion that she is "chosen" and she should go to a particular intersection and speak out her name so that "he" will know her when the time is right to call her ... Years later we meet the real estate agent Leigh (Catalina Sandino Moreno) who's going to sell an abandoned house which later appears to have been the parental home of Hannah. Together with her sister Vera (Naya Rivera), she is sucked into a demonic game where evil is trying to nest in human society."At the devil's door" basically covers the same theme as told in Goethe's work "Faust" : the closing of a pact with the devil and giving your soul in exchange. In this case it's not really voluntary, but it's kind of the same idea. The scene in Hannah's bedroom suggests that it will turn out to be a typical horror about possession and that an accumulation of clichés will be the result. Nothing could be further from the truth. The story very slowly unravels a sinister plot while using the principle of "less is more". This paranormal horror, in which a mix of "The Exorcist" and "Rosemary's Baby" is interwoven with a little family drama, makes sure you haven't got a clue where it's leading too. In addition, there are some surprising twists in the story which sufficiently compensates the lack of some decent frights. There are some extremely strong fragments in it. Like Hannah's bedroom scene, the "Little Red Riding Hood" type of girl who turns a babysitters night into a hysterical experience for the concerned parents, Leigh's confrontation with evil and the ultrasound ("The Possession" flashed through my head for a second). Simple and unspectacular portrayed. Subtle and exciting at the same time.The two main players Catalina Sandino Moreno and Naya Rivera are two outstanding actresses and beautiful at the same time. For once they aren't like most girls in a horror film, run around screeching and being slaughtered by some demonic power. They are intelligent go-getters who defend themselves. They both have a very different role in this film and divide the whole into two additional episodes. And the little girl Ava Acres who played "the girl" at the end, had such a minimal role but played it in such terrifying way. Most will call the end weak and disappointing. Personally I thought it fitted the entire movie and made it pretty open-ended so a sequel isn't unthinkable. All praise to Nicholas McCarthy who tried to create some new enthusiasm in the horror genre.More reviews at http://opinion-as-a-moviefreak.blogspot.be

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