Doors (2021) – Movie Review

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

PLOT: The story of mysterious portals appearing all over the world is told through separate segments focusing on a group of high school students, a research team, a man who finds a way to communicate with one of the "doors", and a talk show host.

REVIEW: The sci-fi thriller Doors (watch it here) is an anthology film of the rarest sort, consisting of segments written and directed by different filmmakers, but each one telling a chapter of the same story. In this case, creator/producer Chris White and creative director Saman Kesh teamed up with directors Jeff Desom and Dugan O'Neal to imagine how it would go if mysterious portals started appearing all over the world. These things are called "doors", but they're not like any door anyone on Earth has seen before. These things are obviously alien in origin, and can really mess with a person's mind when they're in close proximity to them.

Like any anthology, Doors has its ups and downs, as one filmmaker's segment may not work for you as well as another filmmaker's does. For me, the film reached its peak with the very first segment, Jeff Desom's Lockdown, which also happens to be set on the first day of the door phenomenon. Desom and Kesh, who wrote the segment, show us the start of the doors event from the perspective of a group of high school students who are taking a test when the world starts to fall apart around them. Desom succeeds at making the scenario intriguing and unnerving, and I connected with this batch of characters – Kathy Khanh Nguyen as Ash, Aric Floyd as Jake, Julianne Collins as Lizzie, and Rory Anne Dahl as Rory – more than any we see later in the film.

After Lockdown effectively gets us interested in the mystery of the doors, the segment called Knockers provides some information on what happens when people enter these strange portals. Kesh directed this segment, and also wrote it with Ed Hobbs – but while the answers it gives about the doors were appreciated, Knockers didn't work quite as well for me as Lockdown did. "Knockers" is what the world calls the volunteer researchers who enter the doors and then return with reports on what they saw on the other side. By the time this segment takes place, a couple weeks into the phenomenon, it has already been determined that a person can only be on the other side of a door for a limited amount of time before they begin suffering psychosis – which is why a knocker played by Josh Peck eventually delivers the awesome line, "I'm gettin' psychosis, peeps!"

We see exactly how the doors cause psychosis in this trippy segment, which shows the mind games knockers like Peck's Vince and his significant other Becky the Trekkie (Lina Esco) have to deal with when they're on the other side.

More information is delivered in the third segment, Lamaj. Directed by O'Neal, who wrote the script with Kesh, this segment centers on a scientist named Jamal (Kyp Malone), who lives in seclusion and happens to have found a way to communicate with the alien intelligence behind the doors. It's an interesting idea, but not executed in the most interesting way… and then the film continues on beyond what seems to be the perfect moment to end on.

Audio from an internet talk show hosted by a fellow who calls himself Martin Midnight (David Hemphill) helps the film segue from one segment to another, and in an epilogue that takes the film out on a lesser note than it would have if we didn't have this scene at all, we are shown part of Martin Midnight's show.

If I were to rank the segments of Doors, it would show that I felt the film was on a slight decline over the course of its brief running time. I liked Lockdown better than Knockers, I liked Knockers better than Lamaj, and I liked everything that came before better than that final segment with Martin Midnight. I never disliked Doors, I was always on board with what was going on and wanted to find out what was going to happen next, the whole movie is worth watching, but for me the other segments just never reached the same level that Lockdown was on. 

Doors reaches select theatres on March 19th, will be available On Demand as of March 23rd, and comes to DVD and Blu-ray on April 6th.