Right at Your Door (2006)

Pretty Good

Memorable, crazy movie

Let's be realistic.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

In Los Angeles, Brad (Rory Cochrane) and his wife Lexi (Mary McCormack) live in the suburb and are in love for each other. Brad is an unemployed musician and Lexi is financially supporting the family. She wakes up in the morning and heads in her convertible to the highway to work downtown.Brad listens to the news that dirty bombs have just blown up in Los Angeles in a terrorist attack and the authorities warning people seal off doors, windows and any opening and stay home. The desperate Brad does not respect the curfew and drives his car to downtown, but he does not succeed in crossing the police barriers. He returns home and the worker Alvaro (Tony Perez) of his next door neighbor requests protection to Brad. They seal themselves off in the house and listen to the radio about the danger of the unknown chemicals and the panic of the population with the hospitals overcrowded. Out of the blue, Lexi returns home covered of chemical ashes. Brad has to come up to a decision about the unexpected return: should he open or not their house? "Right at Your Door" is a tense and scary low budget movie by Chris Gorak. The movie is like a theater play and is supported by the outstanding screenplay, magnificent direction and top-notch performances of Mary McCormack and Rory Cochrane. The twist in the end is absolutely unexpected and certainly makes the viewer think a lot about the attitude of Brad and how realistic this story is. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Toque de Recolher" ("Curfew")

Unemployed musician Brad is at home when terrorists set off a dirty bomb in LA, where wife Lexi works. Brad manages to seal up the house against the clouds of toxic dust: Lexi manages to struggle home through the chaos and Brad, following instructions, won't let her in.This small scale movie is quietly horrifying on both personal and impersonal levels as Brad and Lexi start to come to terms with what has happened and its likely consequences. There is a twist which is, frankly, both unbelievable and unnecessary but, putting that to one side, there is an air of credibility surrounding this claustrophobic drama.It is quite well written, well performed and directed, and moderately gripping. But it is not likely to leave you with warm fuzzy feelings afterwards.

A poisonous bomb is set-off spreading a toxic cloud across Los Angeles. Brad seals himself in his house for his own survival, however, he becomes torn between letting his wife back in to their home or leaving her outside to die.Chris Gorak direction and camera work gives a sense of realism and he gives the viewer a cleverly written ending. There is some tension created especially when the gas masked army personnel want to get access to his house. Gorak's screenplay is dark and grim. It explores self-preservation, moral decisions and ones conscience.The acting is first rate and natural, Mary McCormack is great and Rory Cochrane is excellent as Brad, a normal everyday guy. However, Right at Your Door appears to run out of steam midway through, not knowing what to do with the characters.Carriers (2009) appears to have borrowed a lot from Gorak's offering, but like Carriers it's not a film you'd want to sit thought again.Overall, an emotional great idea that's well made but becomes monotonous.

I sure hope writer/director Chris Gorak is a better lover than he is a filmmaker, because this movie is one of the worst cases of premature climax you'll ever see.Brad and Lexi (Rory Cochrane and Mary McCormack) are a routine Los Angeles married couple. He's an unemployed musician. She works at some indeterminate office. They've just moved into an average bungalow home relatively near downtown LA. Brad and Lexi seem to be utterly normal in every possible way. Then one day after Lexi goes to work, they and the rest of Los Angeles experience the extremely abnormal. A series of terrorist explosions tear through the city, scattering what the authorities describe as toxic ash through the air. With only reports from the radio to go on (Brad and Lexi didn't get their cable hooked up yet), Brad becomes more and more frantic. He tries to race downtown to get to his wife, but is chased back home by the police shutting down the streets.Alvaro (Tony Perez), a Latino handyman from next door, stumbles into Brad and Lexi's home looking for safety. He convinces Brad to follow the instructions from the radio and seal up the house with plastic and duct tape to keep out the contaminated ash. The radio says anyone who's been exposed to it is dangerous and should be quarantined. But as soon as the house is sealed, a coughing, ash-covered Lexi shows up outside and wants to come in. That would be the moment where what had been a pretty nice little film completely shoots its wad and is left spent and lifeless for the rest of its run time.A husband being forced to choose between his wife and his own life is about as high as you can crank up the stakes in any drama. The only thing more naturally dramatic would be the same situation with a parent and child. The problem is that Brad is confronted with this choice before the movie is even halfway over and absolutely nothing in the rest of the film has even half as much emotional tension. Everything after that point is anticlimactic and the movie is left to just tread water until writer/director Gorak tacks on a swerve ending where he tries to be darkly ironic and only succeeds in proving, yet again, that not everyone really understands irony.I also had a personal difficulty with Right at Your Door's premature climax. Basically…I felt like I got some in my eye. Without trying to spoil too much, I could not identify at all with the decision Brad makes. I suppose it's easy to think this, but I wouldn't do what Brad does and I believe most people wouldn't do it. If nothing else, most folks would lie to themselves about how bad their situation is to avoid such an awful dilemma. What Brad does isn't normal and the abnormality of it ejected me from this movie like I had been shot out of a cannon. Any investment I had made in it was gone and no more could be generated, which made noticing how much the story flounders from that point on unavoidable.If Gorak was intent on having this moment in his film, he either needed to figure out how to put it much later on or how to do it without neutering whatever comes after it. Maybe you take Brad out of the equation and have Lexi and Alvaro confront the predicament, come to a solution themselves and then they have to persuade Brad to go along with it.I surely wish Gorak had done something. Up to that point, Right at Your Door had been a gripping and energetic ride. The radio is used a bit too much as a source of easy exposition, but this movie is very effective at invoking the panic and paranoid fears that seized the American consciousness in the wake of 9/11. Brad finds himself in a world where civilization has vanished and he doesn't know what to do. Then that premature climax comes along and ruins it all.This joins The Green Mile as one of the best bad movies I've ever watched. Right at Your Door does a lot of things right, but it does one big thing so horribly wrong that none of it matters. The closest comparison I can come up with is asking you to imagine what Star Wars would be like if they blew up the Death Star in the first act.Damn. I hope I didn't just give George Lucas the idea for another Special Edition.