At the Devil's Door (2014)

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.

Taken on their own, there are a lot of little things to like about "At the Devil's Door." It's competently directed, but not flashy. There are some really nice creature make up effects. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least two visuals creepy enough to remember two days later. At least one jump scare worked for me because it came out of nowhere.The problem is, none of these things really add up to anything special. "At the Devil's Door" suffers from something I just made up: Handful-of-Interesting-Visuals Disease, or HIV for short. Wait … that may already be taken. Whatever. HIV is where a filmmaker suddenly musters enough inspiration to come up with a neat shot or two, but then doesn't have much else to build around them. What this movie lacks is likable characters, believable dialog, a coherent timeline of events and — when all is said and done and the credits start to roll — a story worth telling. The story jumps from character to character all willy-nilly, never giving us the chance to get to know any of them. Months, then years, go by with the flash of a title card. Once, for no particular reason, the movie jumps backwards in time. Words spill from character's mouths with little thought as to why they are saying them or what they actually mean. There's a bit of clever misdirection at one point in the story, but the reveal doesn't really mean all that much because nothing happens due to the protagonist having the wrong information. It's just there for to make the audience go, "oh." I'm shaking my head; that's just bad writing. While I'm generally a fan of backdrop horror … that is, scary stuff going on in the background of scenes … this movie relies on it almost exclusively. I don't have enough fingers to count out the number of times we get a shot of something in the foreground while scary stuff goes on just out of focus. Or, the trick where a character walks by a window or mirror and there's something standing there. These are occasionally accompanied by music stings, but only when the character happens to notice whatever it is. I'm also not sure the ending of this movie makes a whole lot of sense. It certainly isn't satisfying, but it may also be completely nonsensical.All in all, not a waste of time, but not exactly a great way to spend it, either.

I liked The Pact, director and screenwriter Nicholas McCarthy's first film, very much, and that's why I was very interested in watching At the Devil's Door, his following movie. And even though At the Devil's Door is very inferior to The Pact, McCarthy's ability to create suspense and terror with efficiency and elegance keeps being noticed. At the Devil's Door offers a growing tension, some good shocks and a constant sensation of anxiety. Unfortunately, the screenplay changes its course with too much frequency and it can't decide itself for a concrete direction. Everything starts with an enigmatic prologue in which the young Hannah participates on a strange ritual, something which brings context to Leigh's story and her difficulty to sell a "haunted house" (or whatever it is). Then, we witness long flashbacks of Hannah and the consequences of the ritual; then, the focus of attention switches to Leigh's sister; then, the story jumps 8 months; afterwards, 6 years... and well, that's enough to describe the confusing structure of At the Devil's Door, which includes enough tangents to fill in three movies. But with so much material compressed in an hour and a half, it's difficult for us to integrate into the story. On the positive side, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Naya Rivera and Ashley Rickards bring solid performances in their roles. To sum up, At the Devil's Door is very far from the level of The Pact, but at least, it confirms McCarthy's ability to handle the tools of horror; unfortunately, his work as a screenwriter wasn't totally satisfactory in this case. Nevertheless, that doesn't avoid me from giving a moderate recommendation to At the Devil's Door as a decent horror film.

If you like insidious and the conjuring then you would love this movie. I don't why it doesn't have better ratings. it pulled me in, had me interested, kept me on the edge of my seat. there was quite a few jump scares and the atmosphere of the movie was really creepy. it's a good scary demonic horror movie. At first I was confused but it all got explained later on in the movie. I didn't really understand the ending, that's probably why it doesn't have the best ratings. I however loved it, and I recommend it to any horror and paranormal fans. It's got a whole different story to it. it's not like your average demon, haunting and possession type of movies. it's different and really scary.