Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		2.5

At the Devil's Door Blu-ray Movie Review

Knock Somewhere Else

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 17, 2014

One of the most frustrating parts of reviewing Blu-rays from IFC/MPI is wondering why some of the movies featured in introductory trailers are being relegated to DVD-only releases. The studio's Blu-ray of At the Devil's Door opens with trailers for the Spanish horror comedy Witching & Bitching and the high-concept web thriller Cam2Cam, neither of which may be a great film but I'd rather write about either of them than this Frankenstein clunker of recycled parts from writer/director Nicholas McCarthy (The Pact). The film is so lacking in suspense, so halting in its attempts to generate fear and ultimately so disappointing in its "reveals", that it's tempting to spoil everything to spare readers from sitting through it. I'll keep it clean, but you've been warned. When the credits roll and the feeling of having wasted 93 minutes settles on you like a funk, you'll have only yourself to blame.

At the Devil's Door plays out in several time periods, the spacing of which is deliberately left vague for much of the film. In one of them, a seventeen-year-old girl named Hannah (Ashley Rickards of MTV's Awkward.) is lured by Calvin (Nick Eversman), with whom she's having a summer fling in California, to play a game where she is "tested" by a spooky witch doctor named "Uncle Mike" (Michael Massee, who specializes in playing creepy). The result of the test, which involves a variation of the cups and balls swindle on which three-card monte is based, is that Hannah sells her soul for $500 and becomes possessed by this film's version of "He Who Shall Not Be Named". It isn't Valdemort, but listen closely to the opening and you'll hear a child's voice reading a passage from Revelations and referring to the infamous number 666.

In the film's second time period, a real estate agent named Leigh (Catalina Sandina Moreno, Maria Full of Grace) leads an orderly, work-dominated life, to the point where her younger sister, Vera (Naya Rivera, Glee), an artist, feels ignored. Leigh's latest listing is a house owned by Chuck (Dan Roebuck) and Royanna (Jan Broberg), who are desperate to sell because the mortgage is past due. Their teenage daughter has run away, Leigh learns, and when she goes to inspect the vacant house, she finds odd burn marks. She also discovers a strangely silent girl inside the house. We recognize her as Hannah.

And that is about all that can be said of At the Devil's Door without revealing any of McCarthy's plot twists, as the story jumps back and forth between Hannah's travails, immediately following her California encounter, and the tale of Leigh and Vera, whose names are an indirect reference to another pair of sisters in one of McCarthy's favorite films. McCarthy has described At the Devil's Door as a "Rubik's Cube of horror sub-genres", in which he's constantly frustrating the audience's expectations by changing the rules of the game. Is it a story of demonic possession? A haunted house film? A monster movie? An Omen-style tale of a devil child (one does appear, played by a chilling little actress named Ava Acres)? A story of pre-cognition (the hooded slicker worn by Hannah is an obvious reference to another of McCarthy's favorites, Don't Look Now)? There are a few others frappéed into the mix, but to identify them would telegraph plot points.

McCarthy's desire to create something new with this mash-up of elements is admirable, and several of the individual sequences are undeniably creepy. But despite a lengthy editing process (discussed in both the commentary and the making-of featurette), the whole never gels. There's a fine line between keeping an audience off-balance and mystifying them to the point of detachment, and At the Devil's Door doesn't walk it successfully. By the time I reached the film's third act (or maybe it's the fourth or fifth; I lost count of McCarthy's hairpin turns), which has been largely lifted from another, much better film, I actually found myself yelling at the screen, "Oh, come on!" (And I don't usually do that sort of thing.) Maybe those unfamiliar with the original will accept it, but even they should have trouble swallowing the chase sequence preceding the end, which is so drawn out that the audience has too much time to reflect on its absurdities. The pursuer has had a long time to plan this encounter, and this is how it goes down? Characters often have to behave stupidly for horror films to work, but sometimes it's just too much to accept.

At the Devil's Door Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

At the Devil's Door was shot by Bridger Nielson, McCarthy's cinematographer from The Pact. From the behind-the-scenes footage in the extras, the camera was the Arri Alexa, and McCarthy's commentary confirms that post-production was completed on a digital intermediate, where certain scenes were deliberately desaturated to the point of being almost black-and-white, while others were left with a carefully chosen color palette, the better to distinguish between various eras as the film shifts back and forth.

MPI Media's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, which was presumably sourced directly from digital files, presents a generally pleasing image, though not without issues. The image is sharp and finely detailed, even when it becomes extremely dark, which is often, because sudden blackouts are an essential part of McCarthy's scare tactics. Colors, especially reds in the Hannah sequences, are vivid without intense saturation, so that they can better blend with the less saturated hues of the Leigh/Vera sections. Except for the issues noted below, blacks are deep and solid, which is essential to McCarthy's visual design.

The big negative of the presentation is banding, which is never severe, but occurs periodically throughout the film, usually in dark areas with a brightly lit center. It is possible, though not certain, that this issue might have been avoided if MPI had used a BD-50 instead of a BD-25. The smaller disc space, which is fully occupied, results in an average bitrate of 19.80 Mbps, which would be adequate for many digitally acquired productions of this length (93 minutes), but At the Devil's Door has a lot of dark and complex imagery, and many Steadicam and other active scenes. It needed more bandwidth. As things stand, the image is serviceable but not exceptional.

At the Devil's Door Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The 5.1 sound mix for At the Devil's Door has been encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1, and it's thoughtful but not particularly subtle. Deep bass tones emanate from nowhere in particular as soon as the film opens, and they recur throughout, signaling danger and a demonic presence. The haunting score by Ronen Landa (another veteran from The Pact) is also filled with deep bass; its unsettling quality is one of the film's greatest assets. A recurring sonic theme is alarms—car, house, wakeup, etc.—and they are always jarringly loud and insistent. McCarthy and his sound team delight in shocking the audience with other sounds that are turned up too loud, such as a rap on a pane of glass or the sound of gas flame. It's a familiar technique, but they use it effectively.

The mix uses the surrounds primarily to immerse the viewer in the experience, although there is an occasional rear channel effect, usually an off-screen voice or sound effect. As little as I think of At the Devil's Door, if the film is going to scare you, the soundtrack will probably be the reason.

An alternate PCM 2.0 track is also included.

At the Devil's Door Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Writer/Director Nicholas McCarthy: Recorded in August 2014, after many preview and festival screenings, McCarthy's commentary provides a detailed overview of the film's genesis and creation, including his sources, inspiration and intentions. He discusses casting both the leads and the supporting parts and also the challenges of making a film that, in every respect, was much bigger than The Pact. One point that emerges with certainty from McCarthy's comments is that he made exactly the film he intended and doesn't care if a significant portion of the audience is frustrated, bored or alienated (which, in the abstract, is admirable).



• Speaking of the Devil: The Making of At the Devil's Door (1080p; 1.78:1; 18:04): McCarthy dominates this making-of, and most of his remarks are repeated in the commentary. The important additions are interviews with Sandino Moreno, Rivera, Rickards and child actress Ava Acres.



• Deleted Scenes (w/Optional Commentary by Nicholas McCarthy) (1080p; 2.35:1; 11:39): The six scenes are not listed separately and cannot be selected individually. The most significant are a longer version of Hannah's babysitting scene and two longer versions of conversations from the third act that are more explicit and, as a result, less effective.



• Trailer (1080p; 2.35:1; 2:32): In the usual fashion of horror trailers, almost every "jump" and major reveal is included, although most are out of context.



• Additional Trailers: At startup the disc plays trailers for Cam2Cam, The Damned, Premature and Witching & Bitching, which can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

At the Devil's Door Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Especially given who is in it, I really wanted to like At the Devil's Door. The cast can't be faulted. The three lead actresses all give intense and committed performances. Indeed, the deleted scenes selected by McCarthy and his editor suggest that there is much more on the cutting room floor that would show just how good the film's leads really are. Unfortunately, the actors are locked inside a vehicle that, at least for this viewer, bumps along like some Rube Goldberg contraption built from spare parts that someone persuaded himself could be made to fit together. Rent if you must.