After being wowed by The Possession of Michael King, I was on a bit of an upswing when it came to demonic possession films. Sure, there have been other low-budget possession films that have come and (thankfully) gone, but I still wanted to see what came next. Lo and behold, Nicholas McCarthy shows up with At The Devil’s Door. Now while McCarthy’s film made it’s debut way back in March, I hadn’t heard much about it, other than “it’s by the guy who did The Pact“. Informative, right?

Leigh (Catalina Sandino Moreno) is a real estate agent tasked with selling a difficult house that contains mysterious burn marks on it’s walls. Leigh is also concerned about her sister, Vera (Naya Rivera), who is a loner and not entirely open to social interactions. While preparing the house for selling, Leigh comes across a mysterious girl in a red raincoat on the property (Ashley Rickards). Turns out Hannah has a few connections with the house, one of which is a deal with Ol’ Scratch. As Leigh investigates, she starts pulling her sister into the situation, endangering them both.

At The Devil’s Door wastes little time in immersing the viewer in it’s eerie atmosphere. While we know the antagonist is of the demonic persuasion, McCarthy wisely chooses to only give us glimpses of the entity, be it through it’s beckoning of characters, to shots in the mirror or out-of-focus background shots. You never do get to see the whole thing, and that really does leave the viewer’s head to come up with all sorts of creepy things. Add to that the look of the film, which is primarily dark and desaturated. To spice things up even more, McCarthy decided to take three subplots and weave them together and jump between timelines. While this is might be an instant red flag for many people, as it does lend itself to be confusing, McCarthy does manage to pull it off, albeit not with complete success. Still, it’s a lofty goal, and rather than it being a complete disaster, it does adds a certain amount of misdirection to the entire experience in an attempt to keep the viewer on their toes, preventing them from losing interest.

On the acting front, Moreno’s character is probably the most developed. Leigh is shown to be a responsible and caring individual, while Rivera’s Vera really does come across as someone who prefers to be alone, and is reluctant to accept help. Eventually, Vera does morph into a far more determined character that takes charge. As for Rickards’ mysterious girl, she does a good job of being both scared of the what she’s set in motion, but also showing signs of an inner battle. It’s all about that babysitting scene.

Now I know that this film has been polarizing a lot of people, and I can see why. That misdirection that McCarthy uses does come back and bites him, especially after a certain point in the film involving one of the main characters. Problem is, the sudden switch causes all of our investment in one character to be wasted (McCarthy pulls a Psycho on us), as the other characters have to pick up the slack, but can’t quite do it due to the lack of development. The other issue is with the tying together of the subplots. While again, not totally confusing, there are moments that feel shoehorned into place, and in an effort to keep the pacing going, have been cut down, leaving them vague and causing the film to stumble it’s way to the end. It robs the film of it’s true potential, and coupled with the confusion McCarthy had introduced into the film, leaves the film a missed opportunity.

Calling At The Devil’s Door a missed opportunity pretty much sums it up. The concept of purposely keeping the viewer off-balance while juggling three storylines is pretty ambitious, and the film is well-shot and has some good performances, the film feels like it’s cheating the viewer, as we really don’t get the payoff of investment in the characters we do care about, and the whole thing loses it’s footing by the midway point, hobbling to the end while waving at the viewer without showing the full dance routine. Perhaps if McCarthy had enlisted the help of another writer to help, or if he just stuck to the director’s chair, things would’ve been better. At The Devil’s Door is entertaining, but it’s faults will limit it’s audience to those with the ability to forgive it’s shortcomings.

Video/Audio:

Presented in 2.40:1 AVC-encoded 1080p, At The Devil’s Door looks very good. Colour saturation is consistent with the scenes, which can vary depending on the particular scene. The film has an overall dark look to it, but still retains good detail. No qualms about this one.

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track definitely takes advantage of the film’s locations and mood, immersing the viewer with a variety of cool ambient and surround effects. Dialogue is clear and free of distortion. The low end also gets work in the “impact” moments, which again also helps with the immersion.

Extras:

Things start off with an Audio Commentary by writer/director Nicholas McCarthy, who offers up an interesting talk about a variety of topics, from the look of the film, casting choices, the origins of the film, the score, and the influences of films like Psycho and The Shining. Informative and enjoyable.

“Speaking Of The Devil: The Making Of At The Devil’s Door” opens with McCarthy describing the inspiration for the story. The doc then moves onto casting, and includes interviews with the cast. Following that, the piece looks at the story, the themes, the film’s production, including the difficulties in editing the film, and the “post-mortem” of the film. Overall, while there’s some overlap from the commentary, this is still an interesting little piece that does its job as an overview of the production.

Following that are a collection of six deleted scenes with optional commentary with Nicholas McCarthy. The scenes were basically cut for time from previous cuts of the film. McCarthy does a good job of explaining the context of the scenes and the decisions to trim them, but his commentary also highlights the problems of the film.

The film’s trailer rounds out the extras.