Movies / Movie Reviews

Right At Your Door at the Fantasia Film Festival

By Al Kratina
July 21, 2007 - 14:38

Right at Your Door

2006, USA

Director: Chris Gorak

Writer: Chris Gorak

Cast: Mary Mccormack, Rory Cochrane, Scotty Noyd Jr., Max Kasch, Will Mccormack

Producers: Palmer West, Jonah Smith

Distributor: Maple Pictures

Genre: Thriller

Web: www.rightatyourdoormovie.co.uk

Rating: Rated R for pervasive language and some disturbing violent content.

Running Time: 96 minutes

 

Right At Your Door should be a great movie, based on its concept alone. At the very least, since it’s about terrorism, it gives reviewers and writers the opportunity to break out the old “troubled post-9/11 times” chestnut, thereby bumping up their word count without wasting an original thought. Set in our troubled post-9/11 world, Right At Your Door, takes place in Los Angeles as several dirty bombs are detonated within the city limits. Rory Cochrane plays Brad, who is home and safe when the bombs explode. However, his wife Lexi is three blocks from one of the blasts. Though she survives the explosion, the bombs spread a combination of poison and some sort of contagion through the air, and those in the fall out zone are presumed infected. Though Brad’s character is safe, the central conflict of the film begins when his wife returns home, and Brad is torn between letting her in the house to tend to her, or, as the emergency radio broadcasts suggest, keep her locked out and quarantined, effectively dooming her.

It’s an intriguing premise, to be sure, but the film never really comes together. Director/writer Chris Gorak has crafted a very capable film, but something about the vagueness of the bombs’ contents doesn’t really work. While the mix of virus and poison sort of seems initially frightening, it doesn’t really make any sense if you think about it, like combining a vampire and a knife.  And I never really felt Brad’s conflict too deeply, possibly because he ends acting quite reasonably fairly quickly, so his moral dilemma dissipates and takes much of the tension with it. In this type of film, you want to be wondering what you would do, not just be told what you should do. It's a horror movie, not an episode of The West Wing. An ending clearly inspired by a Twilight Zone episode or two doesn’t help matters much either, because it’s the sort of thing that would only work if the film had more momentum than a movie set entirely in the back part of someone’s house could ever possibly have. There is a lot to like in the film, but there’s also not too much to be afraid of, unless your word count is low and your editor is picky.   

Rating: 6 on 10

alkratina@comicbookbin.com

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12