At the Devil's Door (2014)

At the Devil’s Door: Directed by Nicholas McCarthy. With Ashley Rickards, Nick Eversman, Michael Massee, Mark Steger. A real-estate agent finds herself caught up in something sinister when she has to sell a house with a dark past and meets the troubled teen who used to live there.

“Taken on their own, there are a lot of little things to like about u0026quot;At the Devilu0026#39;s Door.u0026quot; Itu0026#39;s competently directed, but not flashy. There are some really nice creature make up effects. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least two visuals creepy enough to remember two days later. At least one jump scare worked for me because it came out of nowhere.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe problem is, none of these things really add up to anything special. u0026quot;At the Devilu0026#39;s Dooru0026quot; suffers from something I just made up: Handful-of-Interesting-Visuals Disease, or HIV for short. Wait … that may already be taken. Whatever. HIV is where a filmmaker suddenly musters enough inspiration to come up with a neat shot or two, but then doesnu0026#39;t have much else to build around them. What this movie lacks is likable characters, believable dialog, a coherent timeline of events and — when all is said and done and the credits start to roll — a story worth telling. The story jumps from character to character all willy-nilly, never giving us the chance to get to know any of them. Months, then years, go by with the flash of a title card. Once, for no particular reason, the movie jumps backwards in time. Words spill from characteru0026#39;s mouths with little thought as to why they are saying them or what they actually mean. Thereu0026#39;s a bit of clever misdirection at one point in the story, but the reveal doesnu0026#39;t really mean all that much because nothing happens due to the protagonist having the wrong information. Itu0026#39;s just there for to make the audience go, u0026quot;oh.u0026quot; Iu0026#39;m shaking my head; thatu0026#39;s just bad writing. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eWhile Iu0026#39;m generally a fan of backdrop horror … that is, scary stuff going on in the background of scenes … this movie relies on it almost exclusively. I donu0026#39;t have enough fingers to count out the number of times we get a shot of something in the foreground while scary stuff goes on just out of focus. Or, the trick where a character walks by a window or mirror and thereu0026#39;s something standing there. These are occasionally accompanied by music stings, but only when the character happens to notice whatever it is. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIu0026#39;m also not sure the ending of this movie makes a whole lot of sense. It certainly isnu0026#39;t satisfying, but it may also be completely nonsensical.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAll in all, not a waste of time, but not exactly a great way to spend it, either.”