The Devil's Doorway takes the very real horror of the abusive Magdalene laundries with the supernatural. This institution within in the Catholic church hid "fallen women" (meaning sexually active, pregnant out of wedlock, or sex workers) from their communities, abused them, forced them to work, and keep them confined. In the last few decades, the mental, physical, and sexual abuse of the women by priests and nuns who ran the laundries in addition to taking thousands of children born and selling them overseas. All of this is much more horrific than anything supernatural writers can come up with, so I thought some of those aspects fell flat.
The whole investigation starts because of a statue of the Virgin Mary crying blood and it turns out to be so much more than that. Strange sounds are heard at night including the eerie sound of children playing. All of the Mary statues cry and then explode in one of the most effective scenes of the film. A particularly violent pregnant woman is chained up in the basement, apparently possessed. These aspects could have been a bit more streamlined. It's a lot of supernatural just thrown around that don't really seem to be connected to each other. The possession in particular seems to be there just because it's expected to be rather than furthering the story. The payoff for the creepy children voices wasn't executed very well and seemed rather cheesy even though it pointed to the reality of children dying in the "care" of these institutions.
Father Thomas and Father John are the duo sent to investigate the miracle. Thomas is borderline atheistic and jaded while John is idealistic and fairly innocent. This type of pairing is pretty typicaly in possession movies and works well here. They are a bit shocked when the Mother Superior directly calls out the corruption of priests and points out that quite a few girls at the laundries were abused by priests. Her character had great promise, but she remained one dimensional and villainous. The priests are the most likeable characters as they stumble around trying to solve this mystery and getting caught up in the deeper, sordid secrets of the laundry. I didn't like the nuns are basically painted as what's wrong in this situation (even though they aren't blameless) considering that they have no real power in the church as a whole.
The Devil's Doorway does some interesting things. It's a found footage film set in the 1960's and has the visuals to match. The atmosphere can be suspenseful and the plot is fairly well crafted. With the subject matter, I was hoping for a much more critical view of the Catholic Church and it turned out to lay the blame to the nuns who are partially at fault, but don't make the overarching decisions that made the institution and its abuse a reality. Having the priests clutch their pearls about the abuse didn't ring true to me at all, let alone anything else. Overall, it's a decent horror film, but I left disappointed at the tired tropes and random grab bag of supernatural.
My rating: 3/5 fishmuffins
The whole investigation starts because of a statue of the Virgin Mary crying blood and it turns out to be so much more than that. Strange sounds are heard at night including the eerie sound of children playing. All of the Mary statues cry and then explode in one of the most effective scenes of the film. A particularly violent pregnant woman is chained up in the basement, apparently possessed. These aspects could have been a bit more streamlined. It's a lot of supernatural just thrown around that don't really seem to be connected to each other. The possession in particular seems to be there just because it's expected to be rather than furthering the story. The payoff for the creepy children voices wasn't executed very well and seemed rather cheesy even though it pointed to the reality of children dying in the "care" of these institutions.
Father Thomas and Father John are the duo sent to investigate the miracle. Thomas is borderline atheistic and jaded while John is idealistic and fairly innocent. This type of pairing is pretty typicaly in possession movies and works well here. They are a bit shocked when the Mother Superior directly calls out the corruption of priests and points out that quite a few girls at the laundries were abused by priests. Her character had great promise, but she remained one dimensional and villainous. The priests are the most likeable characters as they stumble around trying to solve this mystery and getting caught up in the deeper, sordid secrets of the laundry. I didn't like the nuns are basically painted as what's wrong in this situation (even though they aren't blameless) considering that they have no real power in the church as a whole.
The Devil's Doorway does some interesting things. It's a found footage film set in the 1960's and has the visuals to match. The atmosphere can be suspenseful and the plot is fairly well crafted. With the subject matter, I was hoping for a much more critical view of the Catholic Church and it turned out to lay the blame to the nuns who are partially at fault, but don't make the overarching decisions that made the institution and its abuse a reality. Having the priests clutch their pearls about the abuse didn't ring true to me at all, let alone anything else. Overall, it's a decent horror film, but I left disappointed at the tired tropes and random grab bag of supernatural.
My rating: 3/5 fishmuffins
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