At the Devil's Door
At the Devil's Door
R | 09 March 2014 (USA)
At the Devil's Door Trailers

When ambitious young real estate agent Leigh is asked to sell a house with a checkered past, she crosses paths with a disturbed girl whom she learns is the runaway daughter of the couple selling the property. When Leigh tries to intervene and help her, she becomes entangled with a supernatural force that soon pulls Leigh's artist sister Vera into its web - and has sinister plans for both of them.

Reviews
KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?
Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!
FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.
Brooklynn There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.
tcarroll-23092 Nope. Done better. Actors did the best they could with nil.
thecla555 *****This contains SPOILERS******** It's the age old, demon wants a human body to inhabit so it impregnates people story....just it's been done so much better, this is a bit of a pathetic attempt.I wouldn't say the acting was bad exactly, perhaps it was the script and direction that caused the lack of atmosphere, and the inability to relate to any of the characters due to their entire lack of personality.It is such a loose story, girl sells soul, demon impregnates girl, girl kills herself. Girl haunts previous home for a number of years...demon does nothing until some random real estate woman arrives who can't have kids...so the demon kills her and goes after her sister....why? Apparently we don't need to know why.We are informed very loosely that the sisters have no family, and a somewhat strained relationship, seems they have no friends either.I will commend the actress who played Vera for her passive aggressive portrayal, even though we are given no reason as to why she is so bitter.Also what is with the adoptive mother at the end who appears to ignore her child's ability to change channels telepathically; who allows a total stranger into her home to be alone with her daughter, then doesn't even notice when they leave until about 15 minutes later...also how does she find them so easily....Can I also ask why Vera waited 6 years, then turned up to murder her demon spawn with what looked like a kitchen knife tucked in her pants...??? To end, the child looks at her real mother(Vera)with black eyes, yet Vera chooses instead of death,this demon child should be loved by her so kidnaps her....wait, what? I really don't get how or why this film was made. Garbage.
ArdentViewer I didn't think it was awful - I thought it had promise and was interesting for the most part. However, the execution came up short. So, I'm going to split the difference and give it a 5/10.Positives *Nice visual atmosphere *Generally kept my interest *Decent acting *Mostly good conceptNegatives *Disjointed - the main characters kept changing throughout. I think Vera was brought to the forefront too close to the end of the movie to be an acceptable protagonist. *Plot holes and inconsistencies (to be discussed further) *Soundtrack was EXTREMELY distracting – I was more startled by the sudden volume and tempo changes than by anything on the screen. Music should be there to enhance the mood, not to shove it down the viewer's throat. *Lack of resemblance between the two "sisters." Naya Rivera and Catalina Moreno could hardly look more different if they tried. They have distinct skin tones, hair type and color, face shape, facial structure, eye-and-nose-shape just to name a few features. If this was meant as a vehicle for Naya, they should have chosen an actress who more closely resembled her. To me, the dissimilarities were distracting. PLOT HOLES Even with the suspension of disbelief (a prerequisite for watching horror movies), there should be some consistency and dare I say it, logic to the theme and the scares. 1. There should have been more explanation regarding the teenager and his uncle. What was their relationship with the devil? How did it come about in the first place? What did they get out of the deal? There was so little there that these two characters might as well have been discarded on the cutting room floor. At that level, their inclusion was more harmful than helpful. They didn't take it far enough2. If Hannah sold her soul to the devil, wouldn't the devil's domain be her and her alone? How and why would Satan have been able to wait so long and attempt to inhabit someone else? Wouldn't there have been better things to do, more souls to conquer, etc.? It doesn't make sense that just because Leigh and Vera both went into the house, saw "Hannah," and touched the soot, they would have been ripe for the picking. In some movies, the devil can get anyone and everyone - but this film was not presented in this manner at the outset. If the devil could get to both Leigh and Vera, why not Charlene, the runaway daughter? It would have had ample opportunity with her living in the house. 3. What Vera saw at times didn't really make sense. If she was seeing the pretend Hannah (and later, her "daughter"), why would she also see various manifestations of demons/the devil in the same situation? Why do both? It seems like an awful lot of effort with no purpose. 4. Why did Vera even get to live? If the goal was to create offspring so that the devil could be "all of someone," wouldn't Vera have served her purpose as the vessel? It was obvious that the only reason she remained was to extend the movie. I don't think the ending added anything. Vera would hopefully have realized that it would be impossible to kill the devil's spawn. But if that was her goal, why did she leave with the child instead? We didn't see any overt manipulation/possession that could account for this behavior. To me, the ending fell flat.
Peter Pluymers When you expect a kind of "The Exorcist" variant with a person possessed by a demon, ranting and raving while being chained to a bed, vomiting green slime, reciting incoherent fragments of text in a foreign language that he/she doesn't master and spinning his/her head around in a supernatural way, then you're wasting your time with "At the Devil's door", because this is not that type of film. But if you are a lover of the more subtle horror genre with a nasty undertone and a sinister, menacing atmosphere created by the use of shadows, moving objects and a constant palpable threat, then this is a must see.Of course there will be grumbling about the lack of depth of the characters and of real scares. Firstly, I think a horror isn't always successful by using irritating artificial frights (as in "The Quite Ones" where they used deafening sound effects) or by excessive use of gore elements. To me a horror is brilliant when, even if these elements are applied to the minimum, and it still has a nasty and devilish atmosphere. And you don't need profundity to create that. I suggest you watch a Shakespearean drama when you're into that. You also don't expect scary moments while watching a romcom.It all starts with a teenage girl called Hannah (Ashley Rickards) who makes the mistake to accept the invitation of her boyfriend to play an innocent game and as a reward gets 500 $ for doing that. In a ramshackle caravan somewhere in the middle of a desert, an eccentric, horrid guy plays a cup game with her and comes to the conclusion that she is "chosen" and she should go to a particular intersection and speak out her name so that "he" will know her when the time is right to call her ... Years later we meet the real estate agent Leigh (Catalina Sandino Moreno) who's going to sell an abandoned house which later appears to have been the parental home of Hannah. Together with her sister Vera (Naya Rivera), she is sucked into a demonic game where evil is trying to nest in human society."At the devil's door" basically covers the same theme as told in Goethe's work "Faust" : the closing of a pact with the devil and giving your soul in exchange. In this case it's not really voluntary, but it's kind of the same idea. The scene in Hannah's bedroom suggests that it will turn out to be a typical horror about possession and that an accumulation of clichés will be the result. Nothing could be further from the truth. The story very slowly unravels a sinister plot while using the principle of "less is more". This paranormal horror, in which a mix of "The Exorcist" and "Rosemary's Baby" is interwoven with a little family drama, makes sure you haven't got a clue where it's leading too. In addition, there are some surprising twists in the story which sufficiently compensates the lack of some decent frights. There are some extremely strong fragments in it. Like Hannah's bedroom scene, the "Little Red Riding Hood" type of girl who turns a babysitters night into a hysterical experience for the concerned parents, Leigh's confrontation with evil and the ultrasound ("The Possession" flashed through my head for a second). Simple and unspectacular portrayed. Subtle and exciting at the same time.The two main players Catalina Sandino Moreno and Naya Rivera are two outstanding actresses and beautiful at the same time. For once they aren't like most girls in a horror film, run around screeching and being slaughtered by some demonic power. They are intelligent go-getters who defend themselves. They both have a very different role in this film and divide the whole into two additional episodes. And the little girl Ava Acres who played "the girl" at the end, had such a minimal role but played it in such terrifying way. Most will call the end weak and disappointing. Personally I thought it fitted the entire movie and made it pretty open-ended so a sequel isn't unthinkable. All praise to Nicholas McCarthy who tried to create some new enthusiasm in the horror genre.More reviews at http://opinion-as-a-moviefreak.blogspot.be