Preview Review: The Other Side of the Door
What is it about this horror formula that production companies think works so well? If it weren't for the menial budget and production, these mainstream horror films, which seem to cycle at some Hollywood factory, would be panned flops that become the standard for what not to do in film. But, what can be made for cheap can be sold for cheap. Regurgitating the same formula in a different cover will consistently produce a decent profit, which leads to more of the same.
I'd hate to jump all over a movie I haven't seen yet, but that is kind of the point of these posts, to judge the book (movie) by its cover (trailer). This trailer, sadly, appears to be presenting a very unoriginal concept in an unoriginal way. Parent/spouse loses loved one, attempts to contact or bring loved one back, horrific consequences ensue. And these horrific consequences are generally contained to a handful of jump scares in between a gradual build of understanding the supernatural situation and how to solve it.
Every movie genre has a generic trailer structure that is generally followed. Almost all have a "climax" that summarizes the genre's appeal in a single moment from the film. In horror trailers, we are usually given the plot of the film in glimpses of our protagonist's peril, but once the trailer should conclude, we always get one last jump scare to close us out. While these jump scares are usually shown to pique our interest, they usually come across as reducing the number of fresh scares you'll see when watching the film and tend to show the more generic horror you're likely to witness throughout the film's entirety.
Sadly, this film doesn't look like it is bringing anything new to the table in concept or production. This could be considered a fortunate conclusion. I hate seeing a trailer for an interesting horror concept that appears to be produced in the mainstream format. At least nothing in the plot piques my interest, so I won't wade through the generic garbage to try and pull out some semblance of good story to nibble on afterwards. This one I will likely just skip...until it pops up on Netflix, and we review it at our expense, to perhaps give you a good laugh.