The Other Side of the Door

Year: 2016
Genre: Horror
Directed: Johannes Roberts
Stars: Sarah Wayne Callies, Jeremy Sisto, Sofia Rosinsky, Logan Creran, Jax Malcolm, Suchitra Pillai, Javier Botet

Maria (Wayne Callies), the grieving mother of a young daughter (Rosinsky) and a deceased son (Creran) successfully conjures the soul of her dead child to say her final goodbye. While taking part in the ancient Indian ritual however, Maria makes a fatal mistake upsetting the balance between life and death. This is essentially the plot of The Other Side of the Door, a movie so beholden to cliche that it's a wonder they didn't leave the film even more wide-open for a sequel.

Perhaps this movie is trying to say something about the folly of American exceptionalism. Maria and her erstwhile husband Michael (Sisto) make a go of living in a foreign country (India) with a frustrating lack of knowledge or respect for the ancient cultures around them. Maria especially shows her ignorance by never adopting the language, being dismissive of Piki (Pillai) their live-in maid and finding the languished poverty around her jarring, as if she seldomly sees it firsthand.

Perhaps this film is trying to say something about the toll grief takes on loved ones. Maria internalizes the guilt she feels for allowing her son Oliver to die in a fatal accident. At the beginning of the film she is so inconsolable by her son's death that Piki naively suggests the hidden temple by her village that starts all this malarkey. That grief transforms itself into something evil that tests the fortitude of the bereaved family.

Perhaps the point lies with the dual isolation Maria feels when cut off from the familiar in a country she knows little about, mixed with the isolation felt by severe depression. Yeah, that's it! The apparition and all the haunted-house theatrics are the result of pent up sadness and anxiety with the children simultaneously being the biggest victims of a mother's grief and the biggest cause of horror.

Of course The Other Side of the Door can be about none of these things and I'm giving the film far too much credit. The fact is this film is barely serviceable. The direction is rudimentary, the characterization is uninspired and the story is cliche enough to shake a stick at. The movie depends on a slew of jump scares to keep the audience interested but provides very little tension to keep people invested. Callies generates just enough pathos to keep us caring about the character but everyone else falls neatly into little pre-made boxes: Rosinsky; the cute child in danger, Sisto; the guy who gets involved too late and only gets half the story, and Pillai; the victim who said I told you so.

Turgid with the exploitative bits of every tried-and-true horror cliche, The Other Side of the Door is nothing new. It's the kind of film that can drive any movie aficionado into a real tizzy. It's boring; not bad, I can work with bad, no this film is just humdrum, bottom-of-the-barrel, snoozefest, boring.

Final Grade: F