Never Open the Door (Blu-ray)
Directed by Vito Trabucco
Staring Jessica Sonneborn, Deborah Venegas, Matthew Aidan, Kristina Page, Mike Wood, and George Troester
Produced by Maltauro Entertainment and Baumant Entertainment
Not Rated
Happy January, everyone! The Yule log is now ash, the new year rung in, the family returned to their homes, and the novelty gifts returned to the outlet store. Now that the Oscar season is over, it’s time for Hollywood to kick off the new year by dumping all of their trash into theaters (check out our review of The Bye Bye Man here!). Other than a few video games to review, it leaves me with basically nothing important to do. Which is nice, since my review backlog is now a five page long Google doc. So let’s kick off the slow season with a film I was supposed to review in December, Never Open the Door!
Here’s a fun experiment: think of the worst episode of The Twilight Zone. My money’s on “Five Characters in Search of an Exit.” Now ask yourself, where did it go wrong? Is its message just horribly dated? Twist underwhelming? Whatever it is, pick out that worst element. Now, imagine that the entire episode was that bad. Then smatter in some uncomfortable dick jokes, and you’ll have some approximation of Never Open the Door.
The film wears its inspiration on its sleeve, literally. It actually says on the back sleeve that it was inspired by The Twilight Zone. If what they got from the show was that it was in black and white, then spot on. I will admit that the opening title crawl was pretty good. They go for a classic diorama look, with crafted figurines dangling from strings. Another borderline high point is the soundtrack, which gets credit for feeling authentic. It pairs well with the visuals for about 10 minutes, then never cuts out. After 30 minutes I was wondering if the audio editor got paid by the note. Aside from that, nothing in this film comes close to the material that it’s attempting to replicate.
It’s not five minutes into the film that I had to pause. The premise is simple: six friends are enjoying a Thanksgiving dinner together in the nebulous year of “black and white film but with cell phones.” Everyone is establishing their character through some quippy banter. We have horny slacker friend, straight laced husband, pregnant sensitive wife, vaguely single sexy female, and filler couple. The camera distractingly darts from individual close ups to a wide shot of the whole table, because cinematography is super hard. During these wide shots, I noticed a bizarre seventh voice delivering lines way too close to the microphone. I had to stop, turn on the subtitles, and realized that these were supposed to be lines our main cast was delivering. Holy ADR, Batman! Could they just not get the cast back to record some lines? Did they wrap filming and send everyone home without asking for their contact info?
Honestly, I could have done without knowing who was saying what. By the time one of the dudes tried to whip his dick out at the dinner table to convince sexy single friend to suck it, I tuned out. If not for my girlfriend over my shoulder repeatedly asking, “wait, did that just really happen?” I would have slipped into a coma. I kind of resent her for making me conscious of what was happening to me.
The intrigue starts well enough, with a mysterious stranger knocking on the door, vomiting blood, and collapsing. His final words are, “NEVER OPEN THE DOOR!” Bizarre things begin to happen quickly thereafter. A strange demonic voice demands to be let in. Sexy friend, covered in the blood vomit, transforms into demonic sexy friend. A copy of sexy friend appears, oblivious to the events of the night so far. She insists she just got there. Unsure of what to do, they tie her up and search for demonic sexy friend. All right, interesting enough premise.
The film then proceeds to go absolutely fucking nowhere. Things just keep happening in this movie with no rhyme or reason. At various times the women in the group hallucinate demonic sexy friend trying to make moves on them. Other times she shows up just long enough to stab someone with her nails. Is she real? Is she a hallucination? Who the fuck knows! There are some mysterious men in suits outside staring ominously, and what do they do? If you guessed absolutely nothing, you win!
Never Open the Door establishes the various character paths early on, which all go swimmingly. Straight laced husband becomes paranoid that pregnant wife is cheating on him. Horny slacker friend is generally suspicious and self serving. Filler couple does things to push the plot along. And pregnant wife is sensitive about things. They all do things in line with fulfilling their character objective, and the movie ends. Why any of this is happening, what modicum of sense it makes, is never explained.
It’s a film so bad that you pick through the credits to find the overlap. Oh, you directed and wrote the movie Vito Trabucco? Shocking. Your name is only in the credits about three dozen times. I want to play a matching game with the cast, where you pair the actor with whom in the production staff they are friends with. If you want to cast your friends and loved ones in a movie, whatever, just make a good film.
I have no idea what they were trying to do with Never Open the Door. If they were trying to make a The Twilight Zone-esque film, they failed. I can respect trying to use a classic style, but other than being black and white there was no relation. They could have at least made it a period piece, but then I guess they couldn’t have the evil text message subplot. Be my guest and watch it ironically if you want.
As for the special features, there were a couple interviews that did nothing to illuminate just what the movie was about. If you want to watch Vito Trabucco explain how he made a movie once, and wanted to do it again, then your very specific wish has been granted. There’s nothing fun here, so don’t bother.
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Film
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Special Features
Categorized:Reviews
