The Red Door (2008) - By Duane L. Martin

Film Reviews: The Red Door (2008) - By Duane L. Martin
Posted on Saturday, January 03, 2009 @ 21:24:15 Mountain Standard Time by Duane

The Red Door is basically a horrific art film about the rape of at least one woman and the murder of the psychotic man who raped her. At least, I guess she was raped. I couldn't really figure out if she was raped or if she was just a hooker he was really brutal with. It was hard to tell. It was honestly hard to tell anything that was going on in this film, and here's why...

This film is literally an art piece, and designed to be so. It has a narration in French that's subtitled, while the characters all speak English. Well, the three that talk anyway. The guy who rapes the girl goes off on some rant relating to a comparison of having sex with her and how it is when he has sex with his daughter, and there's a couple of bums with ventriloquist dummies at the end that speak. That's about it.

I'm just going to be honest here. I didn't really understand this film other than just the basics. Other than being extremely stylistic visually, there's nothing here other than visuals that will really grab you.

There's another big problem with this movie. The music is so loud, it walks on the dialogue and makes it hard to follow. This only adds to the viewer's inability to really understand what's going on. This was most especially a problem with the two homeless people at the end. I could pick out maybe one or two sentences of what they were saying, but that was about it. There was something really bad with the sound mix there that just made it tough.

Other than the sound mix, the film is technically really well made and visually pretty stunning. The problem is, a movie is more than visuals. There has to be some substance there, otherwise it becomes a waste of time. Without substance, it's like looking at a painting, thinking how pretty it is, and then you move on to the next painting without another thought. Let's put it this way. If someone was watching this film on acid, they'd probably freak out really bad. I don't really know what else to say about it. It's hard to review a film that ends up being so utterly confusing. Maybe I'm just not artsy enough to get it, but this film, other than looking cool, just didn't do anything for me.

There's actually a 40 minute version of this film floating around out there at film festivals. This review is for the shorter 16 minute version. I haven't seen the 40 minute version, so I don't know if things are made clearer in it and it's easier to follow or not. It seems kind of pointless to me to send out a 16 minute version for review that's so cut down and confusing if a longer version would have cleared up a lot of that confusion and been a more coherent film. Then again, it could have just been 24 more minutes of the same, so maybe I should be grateful I only got the 16 minute version after all. I'll never know, and I feel bad that I can't give an honest review of a film that I've only been sent a cut version of, but my review is honest for this version. Really nice to look at, but in the end, just an unbelievably slow paced and plodding waste of time.

If you'd like to find out more about this film, you can check out the film's website at http://lomalynda.com.