The Other Side of the Door (2016) Review!!!

Synopsis – After her young son is killed in a tragic accident, a woman learns of a ritual which will bring him back to say goodbye, but when she disobeys a sacred warning, she upsets the balance between life and death.

My Take – This is a rare kind of horror movie, mainly as it uses a cliched plot & jump scares to get through is run time, but it has a very solid, tense, creepy cross country atmosphere going for it which makes this film a good one time watch. And while the film wears its influences on its sleeve- in fact, similarities to many other films are uncanny at times, the film rehashes and re-purposes notable genre tactics because they’re known to work, and in that case, the film is damn creepy, if not truly original in nature. The little originality comes in the form of the exploration of Hinduism, a religion known mostly in India (Yup, I belong to the world’s second most populous country). Hinduism is 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). 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, a theme being attempted with mixed results in Bollywood for years. Slow-burn tension and jump-scares come in equal measure as we go on to a resolution that reminded me of Poltergeist meets Mama. I will say this in the story’s favor, though: after things get into motion, Sarah Callies stops trying to carry the film’s emotional weight all by herself, and thankfully dials it back. It’s always a risk when Hollywood takes the premise of horror from other countries, because there’s lingering intrinsic value that might not be conveyed properly.

But luckily the film holds on well. The story follows Maria (Sarah Wayne Callies) & her antique dealer husband Michael (Jeremy Sisto), who live in Mumbai, India and are currently mourning the loss of their son Oliver (Logan Creran). Maria is deeply impacted by the accident, leading her to do anything she possibly can to just see or hear from her son again. As much as she loves her husband and daughter Lucy (Sofia Rosinsky), 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, begins to wreak 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. Thus all hell is unleashed, and now she must stop it. 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.) If one were to mark off a studio horror checklist, the film does almost everything: creepy ghost kids moving in lightning flashes, mysteriously wise foreign woman, body-contorting ghouls, hallucinations, books and chairs moving on their own, etc. Likewise, the film borrows stylistically as well: the character of Oliver looks as if he was pulled from Sinister, some of the random nightmare imagery of extended jaws and black eyes are painfully overdone while Myrtu (the Goddess) will undoubtedly pull in comparisons to Samara from The Ring or Mama. However, just because something is generic and familiar doesn’t necessarily make it bad; in fact, director Johannes Roberts (also known for the horrible Storage 24) proves that he can make these tried-and-true scare sequences chilling in spite of their predictability. Produced by Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes, Mirrors), the film may not carry the filmmaker’s sense of suspense or visceral terror, but it does feel appropriately cinematic in the way all of Aja’s productions do.

The surprise, and the film’s true strength, comes from cinematographer Maxime Alexandre’s beautiful camerawork. Once Maria sets out on her journey to defy an immutable law of the universe, and especially after the rules are broken and the unquiet dead start to run amok, every shot and sequence becomes another subtle reminder of just how thin the line between the worlds of the living and the dead has become. Empty rooms become foreboding caverns, narrow back alleys feel like Grecian labyrinths. Even the woods around Maria and Michael’s home take on a sense of dread, like a magical forest where all is not as it should be. It takes a keen eye to produce shots that evoke a subtle dread to complement the peril the characters face, and lord knows when such an attempt fails, it fails spectacularly. But Alexandre succeeds, and the film boasts a much more visceral impact because of it. Look out especially for sequences featuring the members of an Indian death cult, which have their own part to play in the story. These cultists are some of the film’s most unsettling characters; for me, they stole every scene they were in, just because they were made up and filmed so well. Among the performances, joining the club of just another TV star breaking into the big screen with a horror film, Sarah Wayne Callies does a wonderful job as the desperate mother, she’s utterly believable and sympathetic to audience. Even though she does her usual psychotic breakdown thing, her strong performance goes a long way to build up dread, in fact a lot of the terrifying scenes work because she, in a sense, sells them so well. Jeremy Sisto is also a decent addition as the concerned husband and father. Sofia Rosinsky is adorable and shows enough peculiar signs to make viewers wonder if the ordeal has changed her. The movie even throws a cuddly dog to raise the eerie tension and apprehension whether it will also be a victim. Indian actress Suchitra Pillai plays her part well as usual. On the whole, ‘The Other Side of the Door’ works due to its compelling set-up, good atmospheric nuance, appreciation of foreign culture and fine performances. While hardcore horror fans might snicker at the repeated attempt to cause a scare, non horror fans like myself may enjoy this one.