By Terry Sherwood
The loss of a child through an accident or disease is called ‘Every parent’s worst nightmare.’ in the News presenter’s copy. That idea always sounded rather closed like there was nothing more horrible for a parent regardless of income level. In the case of the short Canadian film The Door which concerns their daughter Ellie’s disappearance, Kara (Tanya Beatty) and her husband Felix (Raymond Ablack) are having difficulty adjusting to the point of marriage failure.
The picture opens effectively with a morose Kara brutally stuffing a recycle bin with the missing child’s belongings leaving the name Ellie visible on the teddy bear’s foot. Kara and Felix have dinner like two people putting in the motions. Kara draws away from her husband’s handholding and through extremely sharp dialogue finds out that he is not living in the same home.
One evening a doorway appears in the kitchen that Kara investigates. The door cannot be opened yet looking in the keyhole she sees something move. She calls Felix to come over which sets up a reckoning. The two battle in somewhat of the style of George and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf except the camera supplies the audience, not a second younger couple. Mutual grief, pain recrimination and hostility founder as Felix makes the mistake of what is now called ‘Mansplaining’ her life and problems. The obsession about the doorway becomes a key that not only reveals something wonderful there is also a one must pay a piper
Spiffingly and economically directed by Alexander Seltzer also photographed, edited and scored with effect.
The Door is an elegant setup that one wise would have a touch more thunder at the end. The actor’s dialogue all flows well, on-screen with often moments of acting still that add to the moments of making this film a ‘still life’ of grief or a nightmare. The Door treads the same space of escape into a world at cost as the third segment of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery pilot film aptly titled The Escape Route. Like the denouement in that story, The Door features an ending of utter finality in exchange.
The Door screened as part of HollyShorts Film Festival 2024.
Bloody Flicks 