Ashley Rickards as the babysitter from hell in At the Devil's Door
Nicholas McCarthy really knows how to make a house vibrate with terror and dread. I deeply and sincerely love his film The Pact (2012), which is one of those films that I happened to find on Netflix (watch the trailer). His first feature was about a seriously scary closet. Okay, the film explored more than just "scary closets," but this calling card gave a strong sense of how McCarthy negotiated fear, women, madness, and cinematic space. Even Casper Von Diem was good in it, and that's saying something. So I highly anticipated his latest film. I have some positive things to say about At the Devil's Door, but as a whole, it was a disappointing follow-up to his first film. This second effort indicates how a bigger budget might actually hamper a filmmaker's creative integrity. It feels like McCarthy is trying to please someone else or pander to a wider audience. While I understand that motivation, I'm unhappy about the outcome.
The film opens with a young female narrator reading from some tome that warns the world about the devil, his mark, and the number 666--just in case we weren't clear that some devil/demon is involved based on the film's title. Then the film follows a teenager (Ashley Rickards) fooling around with her new boyfriend. He tells her about a quick way to make $500 by playing some game dictated by a creepy occult guy with mysterious motives. He tells her to go to the crossroads and say her name, and he will know her, and that she's the perfect vessel, blah, blah blah. She proceeds to blow her new windfall on some cool red kicks and some goth make-up and nail polish, but then she hears some weird noises coming from the armoire (which is basically a free-standing closet). Before we know it, she's up in the air, being thrown around and invaded by some mysterious malevolent force...and then she no longer feels like herself. We get to witness her being the WORST BABYSITTER ever, a truly great antidote to the over-earnest parents who think that their baby is the greatest kid on earth. McCarthy also dresses the girl in a shiny, red hooded rain slicker, which really ups the fairy-tale, Red Riding Hood gone bad quotient.
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| What's hiding in the armoire? |
Fast forward to Leigh (Catalina Sandino Moreno from Maria Full of Grace) as the sweet real estate agent who is eager to sell the girl's former home, fully unaware of the events that previously occurred there. She finds a whole host of weird stuff, including a big burn mark in the girl's bedroom, a noisy armoire with a $500 roll of bills in its bottom drawer, and a mirror draped in black--which doesn't make her hesitate about selling the house AT ALL! Luckily red-riding slicker shows up and lurks around the house quite a bit, distracting the good-hearted Leigh from selling the place quickly. As you might imagine, things continue to go downhill from there.
The film becomes derivative in how it shapes its "possession narrative" and how it nestles horror within the fertile female body. McCarthy does the "sinister home" beautifully, but he's less assured when it comes to the devil. As the film progresses, he loses sight of his unique female characters, and quite literally treats them like "vessels" for something evil, moving from our red-riding slicker girl, to Leigh, to her artist-sister Vera (played by Naya Rivera). The last twenty minutes of the film drag as the plot tries to tie up its loose ends; the biggest problem is that by the time we are left with Vera, the least compelling of the female characters, it's hard to really care what happens.
The film becomes derivative in how it shapes its "possession narrative" and how it nestles horror within the fertile female body. McCarthy does the "sinister home" beautifully, but he's less assured when it comes to the devil. As the film progresses, he loses sight of his unique female characters, and quite literally treats them like "vessels" for something evil, moving from our red-riding slicker girl, to Leigh, to her artist-sister Vera (played by Naya Rivera). The last twenty minutes of the film drag as the plot tries to tie up its loose ends; the biggest problem is that by the time we are left with Vera, the least compelling of the female characters, it's hard to really care what happens.
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| Sometimes Vera should look behind her |
Still, At the Devil's Door has a few moments that, once witnessed, are literally burned into the spectator's brain. McCarthy is more interested in leveraging atmosphere by stretching what occurs on the edges of the frame rather than adding a lot of telegraphed jump scares. One particular image in front of a mirror is one of the greatest images from any of the films at Fantasia. Also there's some awesome evil kid action. Yet like Honeymoon, the film left me wanting more information in some places, and wishing the film "didn't go there" at other times. What was missing most from McCarthy's second feature was the building of suspense. At times, the film has an original vision, but in the end, it falls into too many well-worn tropes. Too damn predictable. While I'll still call myself a fan of his work, I'm hoping that his next film will be a bit more imaginative and unique.
