The Other Side of the Door (2016) Reviews

• The Other Side of the Door (2016)

  samgiannn2016-03-06

  I wasn't aware of the existence of this until about a week and a half ago, but I guess it helps watching a movie without any expectations or bias. Although it's not groundbreaking horror, The Other Side of the Door is an still efficient ghost story. The film follows a couple, Maria and Michael, who live in harmony in India until a car accident kills their son, Oliver. Desperate for closure, Maria learns of a ritual where she can speak to her son one last time. She travels to an ancient temple where a mysterious door acts as a portal between the world of the living and the dead. Her only warning is to not open the door, but, in typical horror movie fashion, Maria opens the door. Oliver's soul is brought back to the world of the living, but something else is trying to reclaim his soul. In terms of scares, The Other Side of the Door is inconsistent at best. There are a couple of genuinely scary scenes, but there are a few more that just cop out on a jump scare. One really great and scary thing about the movie is the demon trying to reclaim Oliver's soul. It's creepy as hell and is reminiscent of Sadako or Kayako. Another thing that salvages the film and makes it watchable is its great story. Maria's story of depression and desperation gives the plot an emotional edge while the Hindu themes and symbolism make it unique for an American film. The movie had a similar vibe to The Grudge in that it used another country's culture to create a disturbing atmosphere for its characters. The ending is actually great and pretty shocking, too. It's not the best "American goes to a foreign country and s*** goes down" horror movie, but The Other Side of the Door is a decently scary ghost movie with a great story.

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• Its themes will linger with you much longer than any other supernatural horror this year.

  jordanhuntgeneral2016-08-25

  Prison Break's Sarah Wayne Callies carries this British-Indian horror production with the same demeanour as her more familiar role; maternal enough to sell the film's major theme, yet strong enough to carry the entire feature. This, after all, is what Callies is tasked with, as the grieving mother she portrays invites her dead son's spirit back to the world of the living with inevitably chilling consequences. While the majority of studio horror nowadays is bound by so many stipulations - the jump scares, the teenage cast demographics - that ultimately render it generic, The Other Side of the Door benefits from a refreshing change of setting in its Indian locale. As a result, not only does the film look elegantly beautiful with its colours and scenery, but its plot also benefits from a less familiar cultural angle than most supernatural thrillers are afforded. The central menace here - a temple doorway through which the living can contact the dead - is so far removed from Western ideology and the recurring origins of its horror movie monsters that the film undeniably offers something that is at least different, if not completely new. The second act, where things go bump in the night as Maria questions the nature of the spirit she's allowed back into her home, is admittedly routine, but that's not the issue with modern horror; the issue is whether or not it can at least try to overcome this mundane narrative. This is where the screenplay's wider themes come in to sharper focus, as the audience encourages Maria to make the right choices while sympathising with her fragile state of mind. The horror isn't simply limited to creepy children and unseen entities, but also the lengths a parent is compelled to go to in order to be reunited with a lost child. It's most certainly enough to make the more pedestrian scares forgivable as you witness a family being torn further apart by their loss just as much they are the shadows that lurk around them. The Other Side of the Door won't terrify you any more than any other supernatural horror released this year, and that's because, by now, genre aficionados really have seen it all. What it will do, however, is linger with you much longer as you place yourselves in the shoes of an emotionally drained mother who, you understand, would do anything to see her son again.

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• what is it with horror movies and lost potential?!

  kieranbattams2016-03-10

  Like, seriously. Here we have a film with a plot that genuinely sounds decent but the filmmakers are incapable of pulling off. Sound familiar? Well that is because this has happened already this year with The Forest.. but The other side of the Door manages to be even worse. Horror films used to be inventive and fun in a twisted way, but is that now impossible to pull off?! The plot involves a woman who's son is killed in a terrible and tragic accident, she discovers she can communicate again with him through an ancient Indian temple, but is warned to never open the door. Of course, if you warn somebody in a cliché horror movie not to do something they are totally gonna do it and she does which brings all the spirits into the world of the living. It could have been done so well.. but i put emphasis on the COULD. First of all the son is evil now. Literally a line of dialogue is "he is evil". Now, correct me if I'm wrong but this was never explained.. ever. Are we supposed to just look at him and say "yeah that makes sense considering he's dead". There was no hint to this when he was alive and no back story. Unexplained things like this happened a lot in this film and it really bugged me. Nothing was ever scary, not even the jump scares made me jump, which is a bad sign to begin with. Not to mention i drifted off many times for a few seconds over the course of the film.. which should never happen if i am enjoying something. By that i mean i did not enjoy any of this film. The premise is great but the way it was executed just felt so wrong. So in the end, this film is just another cliché horror garbage fest that i will end up forgetting about by the end of the week probably. I really hope i get the horror i crave by the end of the year, 10 Cloverfield Lane is why i remain hopeful.

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• "The Other Side of the Door" is worth a peek.

  dave-mcclain2016-03-05

  A clear definition of Hinduism is hard to pin down. Hinduism is a culture, a philosophy and, of course, a religion. It's considered one of the world's great religions and one of the oldest. It has the third highest number of adherents worldwide (behind Christianity and Islam) and is the major religion of India, the world's second most populous country, where 80% of its 1.3 billion inhabitants are Hindu. Hinduism is a polytheistic religion whose many gods are interconnected by their legends. Hindus also believe in the reincarnation of the immortal soul after the death of the physical body. Digging deeper into Hinduism yields stories that have evolved over the centuries and beliefs that are difficult for most non-Hindus to truly understand. In short, Hinduism is a mystery to most of the world – especially to the western world. Perhaps that is why it makes a good basis for a ghost story like "The Other Side of the Door" (R, 1:36). Michael and Maria (Jeremy Sisto and Sarah Wayne Callies) are Americans running a furniture business in India, which they decide to make their home when Maria discovers she's pregnant with the couple's first child. Five years later, they're enjoying life in Mumbai with their son, Oliver (Logan Creran), and younger daughter, Lucy (Sofia Rosinsky)… that is, until a tragic accident takes Oliver's life. Maria is inconsolable. As much she loves her husband and daughter, she's racked with guilt over her son's death and finds it nearly impossible to maintain her own will to live. Seeing Maria's pain, the family's Indian housekeeper, Piki (Suchitra Pillai-Malik), offers Maria a chance to get some closure and move past Oliver's death. Piki tells Maria of an abandoned Hindu temple near Piki's childhood home in southern India. Piki says that if Maria spreads Oliver's ashes on the temple steps, goes into the temple and waits until after dark, Oliver's spirit will come to the temple and Maria can say her final goodbyes to her son through the door – as long as she doesn't open the door – no matter what. Yup, you guessed it. Maria, overcome by the longing to hold her son once again when she hears his voice, opens the door – an act which disrupts the balance between the living and the dead and prevents Oliver's soul from being reincarnated. Instead, Oliver's spirit, in its altered and transitory state, wreaks havoc on Maria's family, while an unhappy Hindu goddess and a tribe of spiritualists who communicate with the dead are intent on restoring order. "The Other Side of the Door" is a (mostly) original and satisfying horror flick. You won't get much in the way of actual insight into the Hindu religion, but its beliefs provide an interesting foundation for the film's story. Rather than happening "just because", as in many horror movies, the scary stuff in this movie at least has an explanation. The flashback scene of the accident that killed Oliver is heartbreaking, the ending is creepy and the story in between keeps you wondering what's real, what's not and where the story is going. (I thought I had it figured out 10 minutes in. I was wrong.) Bringing it all together are Callies and Sisto. Both are movie and TV veterans who bring the necessary acting heft to this ghost story's plot points. Unfortunately, there are some cheap jump scares and the creepy sights and sounds seem recycled from almost every cinematic ghost story from "The Grudge" to "The Conjuring". This all leaves us with a movie whose frights aren't very fresh, but with a surprisingly solid story and style. "B+"

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• Symptomatic of a terrible trend in horror films

  swilliky2016-03-04

  Horror movies have come up with an interesting trend in 2016, possibly not a new one, but it is an awful one. The producers have decided to take actresses from popular shows, namely The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, and put them in a foreign country then throw in a bunch of jumps scares and scary special effect faces and voila, another bad move out the pipe of Hollywood so the masses can eat more bad stuff. Us horror fans are gullible and easy to please but I'm not sure why the addition of horror means the absence of plot since nearly every month I read great new horror coming from clever writers with new twists and prescient plots. This movie was one of the worst with Sarah Wayne Callies, Lori Grimes of TWD, a pretty awful actress. She was one of the worst parts of the first few seasons and I was just fine when she exited the series, spoiler alert but if you really care you would probably know by now. Callies plays Karina an American mourning mother whose son drowned in an awful car accident after moving to India. This gruesome scene was disturbing but it's all down hill from here. Check out more of this review and others at swilliky.com

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