The Other Side of the Door

Image Source

The Other Side of the Door stars Sarah Wayne Callies and Jeremy Sisto as a couple living with their daughter, Lucy in India. They had recently lost their son Oliver in a car accident, and are trying to movie past this tragedy. When I saw that there was a dream sequence with the first five minutes of the movie, I groaned. It was enough to tell me what I was in for. Jeremy Sisto and Sarah Wayne Callies are both good actors. They’re both talented. Here, their performances feel inconsistent. At points, they put plenty of emotion into their lines. At other times, it’s clear they’re reading from a script. The actors playing the children are awful. I almost feel bad picking on child actors, but it’s a major issue with this movie. The movie looks cheap. This was released theatrically, but it looks like one of those direct-to-video movies you come across on Netflix, watch once, and then never think about it again. The Other Side of the Door is also predictable. The main characters have all of the brain capacity of a slasher flick victim. The Indian housekeeper warns the mother (Callies) not to open the door. Spoiler alert: she does. The “scares” in this movie don’t work either. They never really feel earned or built up to. They just sort of… happen. I feel like this movie is trying to go for that slow burn aspect, but the execution is far too weak for me to ever truly care or become invested. They probably said the main character’s name five times in the first 20 minutes of the movie. I’m glad for this because I honestly had forgotten what it was until that fifth time, which shows just how much I honestly was invested in what I was watching. Overall, the occasional emotion being put into performances is nowhere near enough to save this dull, lifeless piece of cinematic nothingness. The Other Side of the Door isn’t even an interesting sort of bad. 

1 / 10