Review #67: The Other Side of the Door (2016)


This review was originally written in October 2019.

October Horror Movie Review #15: The Other Side of the Door

I think it's kind of amusing that twice in a row I watched a movie where the entire plot revolves around a mother whose son drowned and she refuses to let go. I mean, either the odds are incredibly low or there's an inordinately high number of horror films that follow that exact premise.

So this movie is about a family who has moved to India, and their oldest son tragically died in a car accident. It's been some time, but the mother is still heartbroken, and following a suicide attempt the family's Indian housekeeper tells her of an ancient ritual that will allow her to talk to her son one last time from behind the closed door of an abandoned temple. Against the housekeeper's instructions, the mother opens the door, and in doing so releases some kind of a malevolent force that... I dunno, jump scares them a bunch?

I'm not going to have a lot ot say about this film- maybe it was the similarity in premise to several other movies I watched so far this month, or maybe it was the setting, maybe it was the characters, maybe it was the little kids' acting, maybe I was just really tired, but this movie barely kept my interest. There were too many jump scares, the structure of the plot was such a straight line that there was not nearly enough buildup and it was all over too fast, and barely anything interesting happened to any of the characters. The single best part was undoubtedly the last minute or two, when the mother wakes up after the climax of the film; that definitely took me by surprise and felt genuinely clever and interesting (but the moment after it happened the movie was over).

There was nothing profoundly good or bad about this one; it didn't get on my nerves, it was just uninteresting. Maybe if watched by itself it would have been better but as day 15 of 31 movies it was not at all noteworthy.

Overall rating: 4/10

A Different Jeremy Sisto Movie I Would Recommend: May (2002)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Next up: Haunt

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review #181: The Evil Dead (1981)

Image
This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #36: The Evil Dead (1981) As much as I'm trying to make these reviews as standalone as possible, I feel the need to tie this one (at least a little bit) into the last one (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) and the next one (Evil Dead II). So, bear with me I guess. I'm a huge fan of the Evil Dead series as a whole. Evil Dead II was one of the first horror films I ever saw, and for many years was my favorite movie of all time. However, I was never a very big fan of the first movie; I only saw The Evil Dead a couple times and when I did, it felt "lesser" than Evil Dead II in every way. I'll save most of my comments about EDII until the next review, but I just want to say that in this particular rewatch, I came out liking The Evil Dead WAY more than I used to, and liking Evil Dead II a little bit less (though I still love it). If you aren't familiar with the series at all, The E
Read more

Review #153: The Endless (2018)

Image
This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #8 - The Endless (2018) A disclaimer: Most of this review is going to be me complaining about the logistics and mechanics of this movie, and it's going to be full of spoilers. I'll try to summarize my non-mechanical thoughts as concisely as possible. The Endless is an interesting film created by writing/directing duo Benson and Moorhead. Apart from Spring (which to my knowledge doesn't fit into this film's universe, though I could be mistaken) this was the first Benson & Moorhead joint I'd seen, and I was instantly intrigued by the premise: two brothers escaped a cult ten years ago, and after hearing that the cult was seemingly getting ready to kill themselves, they go back for one last visit to get some closure. When they get there, they realize that the cult's supernatural beliefs seem to be true, and they get caught up in a strange web of timey-wimeyness under the u
Read more

Review #179: It (2017)

Image
This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #34: It (2017) I read It about twenty years ago; it's probably the longest book I've read in full. I think the book is very, very good (though also very, very Stephen King, which means there's a lot in its pages that makes it quantitatively worse than it could be) and for the most part this movie is a faithful adaptation... of half of it. I'll save most of my book vs. movie complaints for later on, but I'll just say that the book itself is two very important and very intertwined halves of a story, and while I understand the reasoning to cut it in half (doing the whole book justice would take well over four hours' worth of screentime), I really do think it does the whole story a disservice when this entire film starts and ends with the characters as kids. The book is constantly jumping back and forth between the child half of the story and the adult half, to the point where
Read more