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Released by: Phase 4 Films
Released on: November 15, 2011.
Director: Doc Duhame
Cast: Catherine Georges, Ryan Doom, Daniel Booko
Year: 2008
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The Movie:
The directorial debut from stuntman Doc Duhame, 2008's The Open Door follows a beautiful young woman named Angelica (Catharine Georges) who gets sucked in by a strange late night talk radio show after being grounded by her parents and being forbidden from attending the big senior year party. At any rate, the voice behind this radio show claims that it will grant the wishes of whoever calls in, a temptation that Angelica just cannot resist. She picks up the phone, makes the call and complains to the disc jockey about her situation. She notes that more than anything she just wishes that she could be with Brad (Mike Dunay) but when some of Angelica's friends try to play a few pranks on her, it turns out that, yeah, cliché time, you need to be careful what you wish for. People start getting knocked off and behaving in increasingly bizarre fashion while Angelica tries to figure out just what the Hell is happening.
A film more interested in suspense and atmosphere than on screen gore and make up effects, the film still manages to rack up a substantial body count before the end credits hit the screen. Duhame shows a knack for crafting tension, making good use of shadow and light on screen and coaxing a reasonably good performance out of his lead actress but the film, despite its strong start, can't keep things going all the way to the end where it does start to run out of steam. Additionally, not everyone in the cast does as well as the pretty Ms. Georges does, some of the supporting cast are wooden, even irritating at times.
As far as the production values go, the film looks good. The cinematography from director of photography Gregory Hobson earns top marks and overall this is slick, polished and far better looking a film than most low budget straight to video titles tend to be. The score from Robert Irving is also solid, helping to build tension admirably and enhancing the few jump scares that the movie offers up.
Had the film worked its way to a more interesting finish this might be easier to recommend and it's certainly not the slasher film that the cover art for this DVD makes it look to be. As it stands, however, it's hard to say that this is worth going out of your way to find. In as many ways as it is quite well made and in as many ways as it strives to do something a little bit out of the ordinary within the genre, it doesn't wind up amounting to what it could and should have.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen picture is good, showing crisp detail, good color reproduction and accurate, lifelike skin tones. Black levels are strong and the disc is well authored in that it shows no compression artifacts or edge enhancement. There's no print damage either, the picture is solid.
The two audio options on the disc are an English language Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound mix and a French language Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo dubbed track, there are no subtitles provided. The 5.1 mix isn't as active or as atmospheric as you might have hoped for but it gets the job done without any problems. The score sounds good and everything comes through clean and clear sounding - but the film could have done more with directional effects than it does here.
Special features are limited to static menus, scene selection and a trailer for the feature.
The Final Word:
While The Open Door earns points for at least trying something different within the generally strict confines of the horror genre, the movie loses it towards the end and while the production values are solid and the film reasonably tense, it just can't finish on as strong a note as it started.
