An action-packed slog

Absolutely Fantastic

A Major Disappointment

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

I wish there would be a sequel. The story spans over decades and is very well written. If you're into horror / thriller films, you will be sucked into the atmosphere and story line and you'll keep watching again and again to be taken back to that place of mystery and suspense, seeing things you missed the last time you watched. If you liked The Ring, you'll love this as far as atmosphere and suspense.

Wow! What an absolute mess of a film this was. The story just jumped about all over the place; the acting wasn't the best (but at least it wasn't awful, I suppose); it wasn't scary; there was no tension or suspense. Just a bad film all round really.At the Devil's Door is one of those films you have to really pay attention to as well because it jumps back and forth from one moment in time to another, so if you don't watch you'll end up getting lost very easily. Although in saying that, you're not missing much if you do get lost, because this film is just awful so it's not as if you'll kick yourself if do you miss anything. It's also pretty hard to pay attention when nothing really happens for 90 minutes, and you find yourself wanting to do something more interesting...like watching paint dry.I guess the story idea itself isn't all that bad (I've seen worse after all), but the direction and the execution of the script makes it worse than it actually is. There are no lead-up's to the different scenes...they just follow on from one another randomly and are all put together like a disjointed jigsaw. It actually got pretty painful to watch for about the last 20 minutes (well, the pain started before then if truth be told), and I just wanted it to end quickly.The only real good parts of the film were a couple of creepier moments. Well, the ONLY creepy moments in the film actually - all two of them - in which there were glimpses of the demon, with the first viewing being a scene that involved it's glowing eyes...not to dissimilar to that of The Amityville Horror (1979), which I must admit was executed well. If only there were more scenes like this because apart from those, there was nothing happening in this film.At the Devil's Door isn't the worst film I've ever seen, but it's still miles from being a below average horror, and you'd be better off giving something else a go in all honesty.

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.

This horror film is very well made. It is a new age Gothic story horror that redoes an idea that has been toyed with in many many movies over the years. This time, though, Director Nick McCarthy decided to really wring out the rag of provocative horror ideas. This movie has a thick storyline, and I really like how the movie opened the way it did. The idea explored here is that a young girl sold her soul to the Devil in order to make some quick cash. She clearly had to be the type of girl who feels that she has very little to live for, because come on, who would actually agree to do such a thing. I could see it being a joke, but when there's a $500 reward for doing it, it starts to get a little sketchy. This girl was portrayed as a poor girl who doesn't seem to have any parents. The Director of this movie also directed "The Pact" which is a little bit similar to this movie. There is a pact made between two people in both films, and the characters get whipped and flung around by a ghostly entity in both films. I really like McCarthy's style and I advise you all to check this movie out. It's terrifying!