The Boy Behind the Door

The power of friendship is what keeps the heart of this film pumping fresh blood until the very end.

While The Boy Behind the Door runs out of steam a bit in the third act, it’s mostly a tight, well-paced thriller with terrific central performances from a couple of young actors with bright futures ahead of them—once they get out of here, that is.

It’s another effective use of a simple premise and modest means to create a nicely nerve-jangling thriller.

The Boy Behind the Door is an underwritten movie and an underpopulated one, though missing people are less of a handicap to the narrative than missing information.

Charbonier and Powell, themselves childhood friends from Detroit, focus on the boys’ allegiance to each other with an unwavering focus. This intent minimalism is also why the movie does not transcend its virtuosic, almost abstractly taut storytelling.

In the end this is a fundamentally genre-subservient film, staying within the safe lines that absolves it from getting close to the true horrors it hints at.

The tension is good and the suspense is enough to make it work to some extent, because it needs a lot, I'm telling you, a lot from you as a viewer, for you to believe all the situations from which these children escape. I mean, the way one of the kids kills one of their abductors is just laughable. It's a movie, I know, it doesn't have to be realistic by any means, but the truth is that you get to a point where it's just ridiculous. That made me subtract several points from it.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

just now This is one of those frustrating films that squanders so much good -- performances, design, lighting -- by having the characters consistently making the dumbest possible decision at every turn simply because the plot needs them to in order to keep moving. I spent almost the entire film shaking my head at every stupid, irrational, nonsensical decision. Also, though it's admirable to try to keep things tight, the dynamic between the two children would have worked much better had the film taken a bit of time off the top (more, at least, than five or so minutes) to establish the dynamics of their friendship.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Either we're all getting dumber or someone's paying off critics here. This movie was painfully, woefully dumb. Lazy writing, ridiculous plot with even more ridiculous loop holes and confusing, insulting character & narrative choices. I was so excited to screen this based off all the hype, and walked away wondering when the last time was I'd seen such a seriously weak film. Whatever is going on here with current critical reviews, I'm not sure, but buyer beware. Unless your thing is to rejoice in the concept of being proudly offended by a topic that's literally been around for centuries - which isn't even taken on here with any real sense of bravery or understanding by the writers - or the theme of best friends till the end in a film can erase any & all of your general common sense and expectations of quality, reality, detail and respect to your intelligence, then I'd highly recommend passing this one up. As a true lover of all genres of film, again, just wow. What a total bomb this was, not to mention a waste of time.