The content space is more crowded than ever, making it challenging to keep up with all of the genre titles available via streaming platforms, VOD, and theatrical releases. It can be overwhelming just to browse. To help prevent great indie horror from slipping through the cracks, we’ll spotlight our favorites every month.
Netflix dominated July in terms of horror releases. Nothing came close to touching the buzz of the Fear Street trilogy, but the streaming giant also quietly dropped a strong contender for this month’s spotlight pick; Blood Red Sky. A savage action-horror that brought heart and bloodshed in equal measure, this new take on vampire mythos got edged out in the end by a title far more likely to get overlooked. Yes, even though the filmmakers behind it kickstarted this recurring column. The Boy Behind the Door broaches a dark subject matter with care, but more importantly, it rips through it with intense, nail-biting suspense that leaves you on the edge of your seat.
Let’s cut straight to the chase: The Boy Behind the Door is a genuinely dark thriller. Harrowingly dark. More than just putting its child protagonists in constant peril, it broaches pedophiliac subject matter that might be too upsetting and off-putting for some. The filmmakers are never exploitive or gratuitous about this but consider this a trigger warning nonetheless. David Charbonier and Justin Powell plunge straight into the heart of evil for their unrelentingly suspenseful thriller that fearlessly pushes boundaries.
Bobby (Lonnie Chavis) and Kevin (Ezra Dewey) are an inseparable pair of best friends. They do everything together, including play on the same baseball team. While out in a park tossing the ball, ticking down the hours until it’s time to head to their latest match, Kevin runs off after the ball. He doesn’t come back. When Bobby looks for him, an unseen assailant grabs him from behind and brutally knocks him unconscious. Bobby wakes up later, bound and gagged in a car trunk parked at a house in the middle of nowhere. He frees himself and starts to make a run for it until he hears Kevin’s screams. Bobby chooses to return and save Kevin, putting their friendship to the ultimate, most dangerous test.
Charbonier and Powell know how to block a scene and use sound design to maximize suspense, applying the pressure at a steady clip. More importantly, when they start revealing more about the kidnappers’ motivations for stealing the boys, it’s daunting and repulsive but never gratuitous or overly explicit. It’s subtle enough to still pack a severe gut-punch without veering too far into exploitive territory. Considering the taboo subject matter, that’s a fine line to walk.
Perhaps most impressive of all is just how much rests on Chavis’s young shoulders for the film’s overall success and how he pulls it off with ease. Bobby is the audience proxy and the unwitting hero. In a film primarily devoid of dialogue, much of the dread, intensity, and internal turmoil is relayed through Chavis’s nuanced expressiveness. One shocking encounter with an evil man is rendered all the more potent because of Bobby’s palpable fear. Without a word, the young actor can convey a profound struggle with mortality, both for himself and his attacker, and it’s effective.
The filmmakers inject a few twists and surprises while making it abundantly clear that they’re unafraid to kill their darlings – or ruthlessly harm them- and nothing about their debut feels safe. It’s a taut white-knuckle thriller, made even bolder by the hero’s age.
Charbonier and Powell bookend their thriller with more peaceful, art-house scenes that establish the boys’ bonds, but they’re too jarringly peaceful compared to the rest of the movie. They’re not needed, either; Chavis and Dewey’s performances more than sell their characters’ friendship. Though, I suppose it’s nice to offer both them and the audience a nice momentary reprieve before and after the raging storm. Because after enduring this unrelentingly intense, shockingly dark thriller, you’re going to need to catch your breath.
Charbonier and Powell are now two for two in creating intense horror with minimal resources. The way they wring palpable tension out of minimal space is impressive. That they’ve done this with such young leads is all the more remarkable. It’ll be exciting to see what the filmmakers do next, but perhaps they can give Chavis and Dewey a break from the unrelenting terror. They’ve earned it.
The Boy Behind the Door is available to stream on Shudder now.