The Devil's Doorway (2018)

Good movie but grossly overrated

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

In THE DEVIL'S DOORWAY, an anonymous letter is received by church officials claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary, located in a "Magdalene laundry", is regularly bleeding from the eyes. The church sends a couple of priests to investigate, and document with video, this possible miracle. The events in THE DEVIL'S DOORWAY are a depiction of this investigation.At first glance, THE DEVIL'S DOORWAY appears to be indistinguishable from the rest of the barrage of low-quality, low-cost, low-entertainment-value horror movies that appear in relentless succession each year. I suspect that so many of such movies are made because, though they only gross maybe ten dollars, they only cost five dollars to make. So, hey, that's a 100% profit return on investment. The fact that they're invariably utterly unwatchable garbage is just an unfortunate side effect, I suppose.However, in a rather bizarre circumstance, THE DEVIL'S DOORWAY does have one incongruously positive characteristic: it features surprisingly good acting. The mean old mother superior and the has-lost-his-faith old priest and the possessed girl characters are exceptionally good, but literally all of the actors acquit themselves admirably and completely outside of all expectation.To be sure, every other aspect of THE DEVIL'S DOORWAY is utter manure right along with expectation. Its actually discombobulating to see quality acting, literally where you least expect it, layered on top of abominable filmmaking like buttercream icing spread over horse apples. It's disturbing.Here are some examples of the awful filmmaking:THE DEVIL'S DOORWAY supposedly takes place in the fall of 1960. So, the camera equipment that the priests should be using should be, at best, state-of-the-art movie equipment from that era. Being quite familiar with the equipment of that time, nothing that happens in THE DEVIL'S DOORWAY even remotely resembles what using the equipment of that time would be like nor what the results would look like. The priest operating their movie equipment moves around and films with the ease and low-light capabilities of today's high-quality digital equipment because he's clearly using... today's high-quality digital equipment. Willing-suspension-of-disbelief is utterly absent from this movie. It's as if the makers just sort of "forgot" that the era was supposed to be 1960. NOTHING about this aspect of the movie is credible.THE DEVIL'S DOORWAY uses the hackneyed old saw of "having difficulty with the light" to try to inject some horror and suspense into the proceedings. The light used by the cameraman-priest flickers on and off with the regularity of a strobe so that when the light comes back on we can have some scary ghost or something suddenly appear to jump out at us BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA!Literally SURROUNDED and stewing in paranormal activity, everyone just keeps pretending that nothing out of the ordinary is happening. The old priest, as an example, keeps insisting that some unknown person is running around perpetrating all of these occurrences even though many of them happen right in front of them in real time.And so on.THE DEVIL'S DOORWAY is easily as terrible as the worst of these El cheapo horror pictures, ESPECIALLY of the found-footage variety. But I do still recommend that you watch it for the bizarre experience of seeing first-rate acting in an otherwise supremely amateurish film. It's a really odd experience.

This is a masterclass in how to do a low-budget horrormovie. There is not a lot going on in this movie. Some might even say that it's a bit slow. But since it's a short movie, it doesn't drag out and it manages to stay tight towards the end. The style reminds me of Asians movies like Ju-on, The Eye and Dark Water. There are some really clever shoots and some really effective shoots as well. Extremely well use of sounds and "off camera action". The special effects are done smartly. We the viewer often see very little. This is exactly how to avoid using a lot of cheap and ugly CGI. The acting is good. The mother superior comes of as being 100% authentic.It's almost like 'Dolores Umbridge' in the Harry Potter movies. On one hand you want to congratulate the actress for doing a good job, on the other hand you want to slap her in the face with a chair because you so thoroughly hated the character.There are some flaws. The shaky cam is done to death and annoying as hell. Most of the time it works in this movie, but "found footage" always create some plotholes. I mean, who found this footage? and who showed it? and why are WE seeing it?It also has the same flaw as most haunted house movies: Why didn't they get out as soon as things started to go wrong?, why didn't they call for help? Why would you go around in the dark following creepy sounds? BUT, if you are mature enough to suspend your beliefs for 75 minutes and jut follow the story as it goes, it's a pretty effective horror movie. If you like scary movies, old buildings, creepy nuns and jump-scares this is the movie for you.

In the fall of 1960, Father Thomas Riley and Father John Thornton were sent by the Vatican to investigate a miraculous event in an Irish home for 'fallen women', only to uncover something much more horrific. The Devil's Doorway offers nothing new to the hideous footage films except a waste of 1hr and 15 minutes of your life plus lots os shaky cam. The acting wasn't that good either plus the movie was far from being scary or even smart as it wanted to be. Horror films have their good and bad side and this one? belongs on the bad side. (0/10)

So as you've noticed by the trailer, the film has a unique way of presentation, using the old-school aspect ratio. Its not perfectly clear whether they used real film stock, or created it digitally, but as someone who worked at a film archive, I can attest that they did a pretty darn good job. But is it scary? Is it really like the critics say, that its the best found footage film in years, being a ode to The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby? Well no, its not anywhere close to those masterpieces, but I agree its much better than the found footage garbage we so often see. With a boat load of Hollywood found footage trash, we also get a wave of films made by anyone who has an iPhone, and the vast majority of them are terrible, and while Devil's Doorway is not amazing, its certainly to as bad as I'm used to.But was it scary? Its hard to say yes or no, I would rather say it was hit and miss, some of it got me, some of it didn't. The atmosphere also appeared and disappeared, sometimes it was effective, sometimes it was either not there or was not as effective. Its no masterpiece, but it most definitely had some cool stuff in there. The aspect ratio adds to it, the story its based on is an interesting one (surprised it has been done to death), and some of the plot points, shocks, and scares were alright. Again, alright, not perfect. So don't go in expecting a masterpiece like some critics say, or are paid to say.