Laurence Fishburne co-stars in this thriller that is more psychological than it is supernatural.
Plot: In this suspenseful thriller, a city-dwelling couple is looking to relocate to the suburbs of Portland, Oregon. While visiting the grandiose home of Emmett, a mysterious man with a talent for pairing the right property with the right people, the couple is suddenly gifted the house of their dreams with one nonnegotiable condition — they must never open the cellar door. As time passes, the couple realizes that old houses are indeed like people…they all have their deep, dark secrets.
Review: There is a great short story by Richard Matheson called “Button, Button,” in which a husband and wife are given a mysterious box that, if a button is pressed, will cause someone to die in exchange for a sum of money. The idea of power and responsibility and what strangers would do with such a decision has been a fascinating one. The new thriller Cellar Door offers a similar idea as it focuses on a couple who are given an offer that is too good to be true. The promise of a dream home and perfect life is more than enough to turn people against one another, but Cellar Door posits what price people would be willing to pay and how that changes them for better or worse. With a cast led by Jordana Brewster and Scott Speedman, Cellar Door is a promising mystery that does not quite deliver on what it promised.
The film opens with Sera (Jordana Brewster) and her husband, John (Scott Speedman), preparing their baby’s nursery. Sera is a professor of mathematics, and John is a successful realtor. While John is showing a home, Sera suffers a miscarriage. The forlorn couple decide to move to a new home for a fresh start when they meet Emmett, a man with a penchant for matching couples with dream homes. His palatial estate is offered to John and Cera free of charge as long as they promise not to open the door to the cellar. The odd request is agreed to, and Emmett disappears, leaving John and Sera shocked at their good fortune. But, as you might expect, that good fortune does not last very long. John immediately has issues at work with a former lover, Alyssa (Addison Timlin), which exacerbates his fascination with what may lie behind the cellar door.
At first, Cellar Door follows the formula of haunted house movies by building up the tension that the dream home may actually be a nightmare, but this does not come in the form of creaks in the night, mysterious visions, or even jump scares. Instead, Cellar Door unfolds like a watered-down erotic thriller that lacks anything really erotic. At first, Sera seems like she is the one falling apart as she worries that she may be losing her husband and does not know what awful acts he may have committed. Equally, John seems to be trying everything he can to hide the truth from his wife to keep his perfect life intact, but neither seems to be very good at keeping secrets. At least, that is how it seems. As the film segues from the first hour into the final stretch, the story reveals all of its secrets.
What the big mystery is at the end is not something I will spoil here, but needless to say, it is somewhat underwhelming. There are misdirects and twists in any thriller like Cellar Door, but I cannot recall many making less sense than this one. Jordana Brewster and Scott Speedman are good in their roles, requiring a lot more subtlety than I expected. The problem is they are cornered into a story that does not work as well as it thinks it does. Laurence Fishburne appears for five minutes of screen time and does what he can with a part that merely explains the conceit of the film’s main twist. Aside from Brewster, Speedman, and Fishburne, the remaining cast are all exceptional minors, aside from Addison Timlin, who does what she can with a two-dimensional mistress character. All in all, once the twist is revealed, Cellar Door pretty much falls apart, leading to a final scene that will piss more people off than it will entertain.
Directed by Vaughn Stein, Cellar Door was written by Sam Scott and Lori Evans Taylor. The film makes excellent use of the mansion and serves as its own character, but one that is not explored nearly as much as it should have been. The plot also meanders back and forth between being about the title door and then forgetting about it for long stretches. The lack of sense in any of the character’s decisions and motivations makes the ending even more frustrating in hindsight. Times were watching this film where the ideas I constructed for alternative plotlines or character decisions were far better than what ended up on the screen. I am sure most viewers watch films and think of what they would have done instead of what the characters do, but with Cellar Door, the lack of coherence or logic in anything that takes place is almost insulting.
The cast of Cellar Door is better than this project, and it shows. Jordana Brewster and Scott Speedman both have good chemistry in their shared scenes, which made me want badly for this story to develop their shared story in a different direction. Instead, the film presents itself as a mystery but not about what anyone would expect when they opt to experience this movie. Cellar Door is not a mismarketed film, but it does not really know what it should be about. It delivers a plot and characters that seem to be shoe-horned into the wrong movie. I would have liked Cellar Door more if the cellar door actually served any purpose to the story. Instead, what the door represents becomes more of a heavy-handed metaphor than a relevant part of the plot.
Cellar Door premieres in select theaters and on-demand on November 1st.
