Released by Lion’s Gate in the UK just a couple of days ahead of the 5th anniversary of the events of September 11th, 2001, RIGHT AT YOUR DOOR is a small scale but frighteningly credible movie about a world forever shaken and changed by what happened on 9/11 and – closer to home for this reviewer – 7th July 2005. Set to the ominous, pervasive throb of Tomandandy’s score, this chilling apocalyptic drama from writer-director Chris Gorak is uneasy viewing for the many who watched 9/11 unfold on television. There are brief, horribly familiar glimpses of L.A.’s skyscrapers engulfed with black plumes of smoke. A mass of contradicting, confusing information from the media struggles to keep up with the escalating destruction at hand. This is a snapshot of chaos, and it leaves you reeling.
Out of work Los Angeles musician Rory Cochrane says goodbye to his breadwinner wife (Mary McCormack) as she heads for work on an ordinary morning. Ordinary until a series of coordinated dirty bombs are set off during rush hour in strategic parts of the city, including Downtown and the airport. After a fruitless attempt to locate his wife, Cochrane and a neighbour heed the advice of the authorities and take refuge inside the former’s duct-taped house. Some time later, McCormack shows up, with a severe cough and all the signs that she has become infected by the chemicals unleashed by the bombs. The radio has warned about the high risk of interacting with contaminated people, so Cochrane faces the agonising decision whether or not to let his wife into their house while everyone waits for the supposedly imminent arrival of medical supplies promised by the government.
Gorak takes an almost first person approach to this catastrophe : we rarely leave Cochrane’s sympathetic character and experience the unfolding tragedy from his vantage point. As a result, only vague details – offered by the media – are provided about the bombs, their impact and the aftermath awaiting the survivors. The origins of the attack remain unknown, but, in this decade, we can guess.
Gorak’s approach bears the chilly influence of intense Vietnam-era American horror films. The apocalyptic shadow of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD looms over the whole movie. As in Romero’s masterpiece, radio broadcasts act as a kind of running commentary, while the confinement of the hero to a single, barricaded house, reflects the central scenario of the 1968 film. In a strong visual echo of movies like THE CRAZIES and RABID, the sinister nature of the anonymous, quarantine-suited officials sent to ease the crisis (they have guns and don’t hesitate to use them) presents us with a grim situation in which our alleged saviours are as much of a threat as the thing we’re supposed to be afraid of. The final, gloomily ironic twist adds to the cynical 70’s feel.
This brave movie’s bleak message seems to be that, in this kind of situation, no one really knows what the best course of action is, and no one is truly safe. RIGHT AT YOUR DOOR is superbly acted and directed : the first half hour in particular is a startling evocation of panic, capturing the immediate terror of a normal day transformed by events that no one is prepared for. The anguished performances of both Cochrane and McCormack add to the considerable impact.
-Steven West
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- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
