Reviews
‘Door’ (1988) Is the Greatest Home Invasion Thriller That You’ve Never Seen
An overworked and underappreciated housewife, Yasuko Honda spends most of her days in a cluttered apartment, tending to the needs of her rambunctious son and typical working husband. With both of them leaving her alone throughout the daytime, her hours are occupied by housework and small talk over the phone. But soon, phone calls from a pervert herald a much worse threat: a maddened door-to-door salesman turned stalker named Yamakawa, who threatens Yasuko’s life and her family’s safety. The only thing between her and him? A front door that grows weaker to hold him back every day.
Screambox for as long as I can remember, and I say this with love, the scrappy underdog in the streaming world. With many larger services taking up the mental real estate of horror fans everywhere, it begs the question, what’s their strongest selling point? The answer to that question came up recently with the streaming premiere of the 1988 Japanese psychological thriller film Door.
ONCE FORGOTTEN, NOW VOD (COURTESY OF SCREAMBOX)
An overworked and underappreciated housewife, Yasuko Honda spends most of her days in a cluttered apartment, tending to the needs of her rambunctious son and typical working husband. With both of them leaving her alone throughout the daytime, her hours are occupied by housework and small talk over the phone. But soon, phone calls from a pervert herald a much worse threat: a maddened door-to-door salesman turned stalker named Yamakawa, who threatens Yasuko’s life and her family’s safety. The only thing between her and him? A front door that grows weaker to hold him back every day.
Directed by Banmei Takahashi, Door had a repertory screening this year at Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, which our lovely editor, James-Michael was able to catch, but I missed. I was delighted to find out, however, that Screambox has made the film available for a home release. This answers the question: if Screambox keeps putting up quality obscure titles like this, it has serious potential to become a repository for tons of great lost media that are currently being restored.
THE LONG SLOW DEATH OF ISOLATION
Door is best compared to Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, in that it’s a psychological horror trying to say something about the cinematic culture around it; being a weird psycho-sexual nightmare is sort of just the byproduct. As Haneke’s work commented on the violence of American media and the arms race of captivating audiences with atrocities, Door is about an ever-increasing push towards individualism, and the fear of that isolation’s effects on future generations.
Yasuko lives in a densely packed building, and a lot of the horror that comes from Door’s premise is that despite Yamakawa’s very loud and very visible attacks, her neighbors are little help. The building is more preoccupied with garbage codes than it is protecting its residents, and the police of the city do little to help. Door verbalizes a longstanding urbanist anxiety of being so close to the people around you while having no sense of community and in turn, no sense of protection. Yasuko is forced to keep her head down and shrug off the worst of her assailant’s offenses, because who does she really have in the end?
Moreover, Takahashi’s work was also especially prescient for a Japanese audience: it’s a foretelling of the much more dire conditions that would strike Japan’s Lost Generation, and the subsequent loneliness epidemic that plagues the nation today. With that loneliness epidemic spreading abroad, it’s frightening to think of how more relatable the film might become for Western audiences.
CAT AND MOUSE WITH A PURPOSE
As I mentioned earlier, the film also has a very overtly psycho-sexual angle, especially in the way the film represents the relationship between Yasuko and Yamakawa with objects rather than outright nudity, i.e., there’s a lot of blatant, smack-you-over-the-head phallic symbolism. Knives are penises. Newspapers are penises. Hands are penises. Everything is a penis.
This undoubtedly has something to do with Banmei Takahashi’s origins in the “pink film” boom of 1970s Japan. That trend involved a lot of sleazier fare, erotic thrillers made for dirt cheap, and playing up the scandalous nature of the stories as something to gawk at rather than analyze. But Door feels like an attempt to finally explore many of those films’ more salacious and violent aspects as the byproducts of a broken society rather than a source of cheap thrills.
Takahashi zooms in on how violent men like Yamakawa try to take advantage by exerting violence on the isolated. Sexual symbols here are more symbols of sexual violence. They’re on the nose, yes, but unmistakable in their intent; they show how Yamakawa is looking for control rather than any sort of sexual and romantic connection, and doesn’t mince its message on that.
Door’s climax (which I won’t spoil too much but will say involves a tiny chainsaw) is the most destructive and blatant example of this, and it’s captivating in how bizarre and long it is. It’s uncomfortable, rife for dissection, and a fascinating choice for a director whose style evolved quite a bit from humble origins.
FRAMING THAT MAKES YOU FEEL TRAPPED
Speaking of Takahashi’s directing, his camerawork here is incredibly efficient at backing up the thematic fears of the story. There’s a really effective contrast made between how Takahashi shoots Door’s interior and exterior shots. The exteriors emphasize openness with some expertly composed wides; outside, the camera often looks down from high up at Yasuko and her son Takuto, sometimes feeling like a voyeur viewing from a rooftop above and framing them perfectly. But inside the apartment, all that visual freedom is taken away to crank up the tension.
There is an unease in the Honda family’s home; it is cluttered, oddly shaped with a hard-to-pin-down layout, and cramped; those details add to the anxiety of it all. Door is, in many ways, a great crash course for anyone looking to see how influential shot composition can be, even when it’s something as simple as the furniture arrangement in a corridor.
Takahashi is able to build the maximum amount of fear with simple shots of unlocked doors and narrow hallways because everything feels claustrophobic without being outright close-ups. This factors most importantly into the aforementioned climax, where that tension pays off, and all hell breaks loose.
A SOUNDTRACK THAT DENIES YOU COMFORT
And what may be my favorite part of Door is its soundtrack. The music here can best be described as comforting and dulcet. It’s a byproduct of the booming music scene of late-1980s Japan and its focus on smooth jazz. It’s a gorgeous soundtrack composed by Gôji Tsuno, that has a sort of romantic lilt to it…
Until it simply isn’t.
Until it’s abruptly torn away, and a switch flips in your brain telling you something is wrong. The music cuts out at seemingly random intervals but is timed to disorient you. It leaves the viewer to listen to the sounds of struggle, the sounds of breathing, the aftermath of an attack, only to return and start the cycle over again. It’s a genius choice, and a highly underutilized one. It’s the first time in a while that a soundtrack wasn’t telling me how I should feel, but how I felt outright.
Door earned my fondness because Banmei Takahashi took a very common premise for a psychological thriller and imprinted his one-of-a-kind vision on it. To my knowledge, he was a bit of a hired gun in the pink film era who almost quit due to disagreements with producers, but persevered and went on to make a variety of films in many different genres.
Door marks one of those beautiful moments where a director reflects on their past works, and creates something wholly unique in the process. It’s a diamond in the rough (one that will likely land on my Hidden Gems of 2023 list early next year), so I hope you seek it out and enjoy it as much as I did.
You can stream Door (1988) on Screambox.
A24 never stopped pumping out banger horror movies. Let’s get that out of the way, straight away. Even its commercial and critical flops, like Opus or Y2K, still took a lot of really original swings, even if it hasn’t been a string of masterpieces like in their horror heyday of the late 2010s and early 2020s. Still, they may have made their scariest yet with Undertone, in a return to A24’s original MO of pure indie filmmaking.
A Single Location Horror Film Powered by Sound
Undertone is not a perfect movie, with an occasional off story beat, and the ending just missing the mark of perfection, but it is a tried-and-true testament to the power of storytelling. With essentially one active, on-screen actress and a single location, the film manages to create a sensory hellscape with immersive nightmare-inducing audio that has both story and scares derived entirely from a podcast. It is a sensory overload of pure terror, one that feels deeply sinister in its pitch-black story, one that demands to be seen in the darkest possible movie theater.
A24’s Undertone: A True Crime Podcast Turns Supernatural
The story is pretty straightforward…at least at first. It follows a true crime/horror podcast host (Nina Kiry), who lives by herself as she takes care of her dying, elderly, and borderline vegetative mother. Her co-host (Adam DiMarco, who is never fully seen) is sent a series of ten mysterious audio files from an unknown address, presumably sent for her to listen to on the show. As they begin to record their latest episode with live reactions to the files, reality slips further as she and her co-host fall into supernatural delirium. Strange noises, slipping time, and other haunted house trimmings all come out to play, each elevated by (as mentioned) horrific sound design and an even more horrific backstory.
Nursery Rhyme Origins and Deeply Disturbing Mythology
The story is about 95% airtight. Without getting too deep into spoilers, the origins of these files and their meaning are deeply fascinating, with some elements and angles involving the origins of nursery rhymes that are very, genuinely disturbing. There is one twist in particular that explores what one of the sounds truly means, which is highly upsetting once pieced together.
That being said, Undertone has some familiar tropes, and while the movie mostly touches upon certain unexplored mythology, certain scenes can feel a little too familiar to other recent demon movies like Shelby Oaks. The true meanings are a lot more creative, but it could have played around with its mythos to create a truly original villain.
Undertone’s Ambiguous Ending Demands a Rewatch
Similarly, the ending is almost perfect. There is a final twist about something the protagonist might have done that is a little confusing, and reframes the context of the film. It is highly interesting, however, and opens up several cans of worms of what this movie has to say about children, motherhood, and parenthood as a whole, as well as posing questions about the movie’s setting and timeline. It is always better to remain vague in horror, which this movie definitely does, but just a slight retweak of its final act could give the audience just the tiniest more understanding, without it going into full, mainstream territory. The film definitely requires a second watch, and in the best way possible.
A Groundbreaking Podcast Horror Experience
In a nutshell, the film’s methods of storytelling are groundbreaking. This movie is not a podcast, but all of its scares and stories are delivered to us like it is one. It feels like the birth of a new medium or style of movie, a perfect blend of audio and visual, with emphasis on the audio.
Additionally, with the story being literally told to us as if we’re listening to the characters’ podcast itself, it is a nightmare rabbit hole.
Like many people born in the mid-90s, the Sci-Fi Channel was one of my first introductions to horror. Whether it was random films playing or Sci-Fi’s 31 Days of Halloween, this channel was one of the main channels in my household. For the month of March, we’re going to take a look at Sci-Fi Originals (and maybe I cheated a bit and picked films that had their premiere on Sci-Fi). Picking films for this month was no easy task. Did I want to cover one of the plethora of amalgamated mega-animals fighting each other? Or what about shark tornadoes? One of the films I picked, after finding it too difficult to find Children of the Corn (2009) on streaming services, was an odd alien film I had never even heard of. That film is Silent Warnings.
What is Silent Warnings About?
Layne Vossimer (A.J. Buckley), his girlfriend Macy (Callie De Fabry), and a group of their friends head to Layne’s cousin’s house, Joe (Stephen Baldwin), after his mysterious death. Once there, they find the house in disgusting disarray. The friends decide to help Layne clean it up in order to put it on the market. But things quickly go south when they find a series of VHS tapes Joe left behind in the attic. What’s revealed in those tapes shows something that’s out of this world. Can Layne, his friends, and Sheriff Bill Willingham (Billy Zane) fend off these otherworldly invaders before it’s too late?
Conspiracy Theories, Mental Health, and Paranoia in Silent Warnings
As stated, this film was a late pick as I could not find 2009’s Children of the Corn streaming anywhere. Boy, am I glad I picked this. Silent Warnings has its fair share of issues. But it makes up for them in so many ways. This film is a very sober look into conspiracy theories, mental health, and the lengths that people go to when it comes to perceived threats. We get very little Stephen Baldwin, but what we do get is more than enough. He’s a recluse who lives on his 40-ish-acre property that’s been alien-proofed. His best friend (cousin?) is a scarecrow that has an AK-47. And he constantly records incoherent ramblings with his camcorder. Baldwin absolutely kills in his limited screentime. It’s like Stanislavski said, there are no small parts, only small actors.
Small-Town Horror and UFO Lore in Porterville
The quaint town of Porterville acts as the perfect backdrop for a story like this: a sleepy, nowhere town, where most people know each other. A town where the big call of the day for the Sheriff is about a missing dog. It’s the perfect setup for a story like this. It even mirrors many of the towns mentioned in Silent Invasion: The Pennsylvania UFO-Bigfoot Casebook. Much of this film’s atmosphere, the crop circles, acres of corn, and the disintegrating house, create a condensed world that adds so much claustrophobia to the film’s soul.
Acting, Dialogue, and the Problem with Early 2000s CGI Aliens
That being said, there are quite a few issues. Mainly, the acting. Besides Kim Onasch, Michelle Borth, Billy Zane, and A.J. Buckley (mostly), much of this film’s acting feels very Sci-Fi Original. It doesn’t help that the film’s dialogue, from writers Bill Lundy, Christian McIntire, and Kevin Gendreau, is just plain boring. And that’s not even mentioning how awful the CGI aliens look. A 2003 film about aliens, when only two or three are shown on screen, should be fully practical. And the fact that they use digital aliens takes away much of the film’s punch.
Why Silent Warnings Is an Underrated Sci-Fi Original
Silent Warnings doesn’t break much ground when it comes to the topic of aliens/Ufology, but it’s damn entertaining. But that’s the thing. Films don’t necessarily need to break new ground. I appreciate the swings this film takes, whether they hit or miss. There’s a wonderful setup with Stephen Baldwin, and the slow build to an exciting finale makes it all worth the wait. For a Sci-Fi Original, Silent Warnings has worked its way into my heart.
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