A different way of telling a story

This is an astonishing documentary that will wring your heart while it bends your mind

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

As an avid horror movie fan I've seen my fair share of supernatural horror (sorry slashers are stupid and annoys the hell out of me), I can't take any reviews on IMDb seriously.It shocks me to see better horrors like this one having low ratings whereas atrocious ones like The Possession of Michael King (this was awful), or The Haunting in Connecticut 2 (this was laugh worthy) getting higher ratings. It's really vexing.Now let's get to this movie.The movie as a whole is enjoyable. A girl sells her soul (unintentionally) so she could make her boyfriend happy (and also $500). She then starts getting haunted by an unknown force. If I say anything more it'll be spoilers.The story is okay, not a gem but not bad either. The ending could've gone better. But it's still comprehensible enough to be enjoyable.The movie doesn't follow the usual horror recipe of being a loud scream fest. But in contrast it's very silent which intensifies the ambiance.The performances are the highlight of this movie. There are 3 female leads and all of them give equally good performances. And gives a good few scare performance.Definitely recommend it to a horror fan.

A young couple visits the guy's uncle. He's got $500 if the girl plays a game. She picks a happy face pin from a box and has to guess under which of the cups it'll be after the creepy old man spins the cups around. She guesses right 3 times and the third time the pin has an ash cross over it. The uncle tells her she's been chosen and to go to a crossroad and say her name so "he" will know who she is and then gives her the $500.Back at home the girl hears something and she's lifted in the air and thrown around. She tries to bury the money, then burn it but it keeps appearing in her drawer.Next we meet a pretty real estate agent. She has a sister who's an artist and is about to do an exhibition. The agent visits an empty house she's going to sell. There she sees the girl from the intro. She tells the owners who think it may their missing daughter who ran away with her boyfriend. But then it turns out the daughter is found. The agent discovers that the girl she's seeing is someone else who committed suicide. But then, the unseen force kills her.Now her sister, the artist, picks things up. She interviews one of the suicide's friends who tells her all sorts of info on the girl. Then the artist is attacked by the force and ends up in the hospital. When she wakes up from a coma she's told that she's pregnant. During the ultrasound she sees an evil face on the screen and demands the doctors take out the kid. Several years later she visits her creepy-looking daughter.I had high hopes for At the Devil's Door. I enjoyed the writer/director's previous effort The Pact, although he's yet another male who insists on making movies without any significant male characters. Is that what it takes these days to make it in Hollywood? Unfortunately this movie is a step in the wrong direction. The strongest female, Ashley Rickards, gets only the secondary role of the intro girl, while the weakest actress get the more significant role. The main problem though is the nonsensical story. A movie about a demon looking to procreate should make for a good horror movie actually. But here it's told in too roundabout a way. You can't really care about most of the characters including the main character, which is a terrible flaw. Like most movies, this one, too, goes eventually on mute with no one saying much of anything, certainly the demon doesn't say a whole lot, he doesn't even make a sound.That said, Nicholas McCarthy is a good director, perhaps not so much when it comes to telling a story, but definitely when it comes to shooting a movie. And he goes for subtlety instead of hyper explicitness--always a good idea in horror. So when we see the demon, it's usually at a distance, unfocused in the background, or in a mirror reflection. That does make the demon less menacing, which is why he should have been given more of a voice. At the Devil's Door is a movie that had potential but most if it was unrealized.

Really hard to make heads or tails out of this one. There's no discernible plot, almost no dialog or action and what little there is is the most trite cliché standard issue 'horror' possible. It's nearly pitch black and the mandatory jitter cam is run of the mill. There are a lot of loud noises. But mostly random snippets and emotional baggage scenes. And slow. Slow slow slow slow slow. It's more of a template for all the things you should try to cram into a movie than it is an actual movie. Others have written that the ending is a disappointment but when it ends at all it'l be a relief. Also weirdly it's for the most part an all female cast. And they all whisper. In the pitch dark black.

Hard to figure out if this is really a horror.First up - the acting, sound, shooting, and editing are brilliant. On that basis it's an award winner.The story starts with selling one's soul to the devil, and this passes through four characters, all female. She just gets $500 and when she speaks her name at a crossroad he comes for her and she ends up committing suicide.So most of the story seems like a metaphor - the illusions of lonely women in a declining society. There's no significant male character - just the shadow of the beast.I thought this was going to go Mulholland Drive, with the artist sister having invented the story to justify her evil deeds. But it ended straight.Overall really impressed, especially with the expectation of something new in each scene. But it needed an extra level. Horror has to horrify, and a great story has to be meta - very hard to combine them.I rated The Pact, which was a genuine horror but with much lower standards. So I reckon McCarthy will blow my mind next time round.One more thing: I got confused distinguishing the female characters in this movie and in The Pact - is it just me?