The Open Door

Supernatural Horror

Second Sight Films

R2 DVD

The Open Door is a pirate radio station that only broadcasts on the night of the full moon. Wherever its signal is directed there will be upheaval, insanity and death. Tonight it is directed at Angelica’s suburb.

Angelica is a high school girl with low self-esteem. Her mother reads her email and the messages on her mobile phone, she is grounded and her acquiescent father will not intercede for her with her mother, and even her friend, Staci the school slut, regards her as a joke. She has just met a boy she seems to be able to get on with and she arranges to meet him at a party, but once again Mum gets in the way and insists that Angelica stay at home – she is, after all, grounded for her constant battles with her mother.

Staci sets up the boy out of jealousy and photographs one of her friends kissing him. It looks incriminating and she sends the pictures to Angelica. Angelica, in the depths of despair at ever having a life, is listening to The Open Door. A woman announcer who calls herself The Oracle is broadcasting at the time and is discussing exactly the sort of problems that Angelica is having. Here is someone who seems to understand what she is going through! She rings the radio station and The Oracle urges Angelica to take control of her own life. What does she really, really wish for? Angelica wishes that all the people who give her a hard time would just go away. The Oracle gets her to repeat an oath and says her wish will come true.

The partygoers decide to go to Angelica’s and in their drunken stupidity they try to terrify her with odd noises outside the house. Tonight the terror is directed back at them. Angelica’s oath has called into being a demon who will make her wish come true, but the outcome won’t be quite the way Angelica wanted it to go. In a terrifying half hour most of them will die cruelly.

The film is a superb piece of horror. The supernatural aspect is there but is not overdone. There are few sympathetic characters and I sometimes found myself cheering as the demon got one, especially Timmy-who-prefers-to-be-called-Spike. Even Angelica, skilfully played by Catherine Georges, comes across as a meek somewhat gutless person – an ideal subject for a demon’s influence. Don’t do a deal with a demon.

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