Filmmaker
Nicholas McCarthy (The Pact) has a
real sense for creating dread onscreen, creating some truly terrifying images
to go with the narrative in At the Devil’s
Door. The only problem is that nothing in his derivative screenplay matches
the visuals created, making At the Devil’s
Door feel more like a horror demo reel than a complete story. Frightening
as some of the images are, they are neither grounded in reality nor attached to
realistic characters that the audience can be convinced to care for. Instead,
each scene merely feels derived for the singular purpose of setting up each
atmospheric sequence to the next, like a collection of style-heavy student
films rather than a complete narrative.
