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‘Cellar Door’ Review: Scott Speedman and Jordana Brewster Find a Portal to Implausibility in Suburban Portland
Scott Speedman and Jordana Brewster play new residents in a contrived thriller whose conventional surface gloss undermines any suspense or scares.
This becomes one more thing he has to hide from his newly pregnant-again wife, realizing Emmett’s on-the-nose pronouncement, “Houses are like people, they all have their deep dark secrets.” As Alyssa’s vengeance grows even more aggressive, the possibilities of violence and of past sins hidden in the cellar naturally intertwine. Briefly goosed by a step into cheesy retro erotic-thriller terrain around the two-thirds point, “Cellar Door” is otherwise frustratingly mild — the kind of movie whose cuss words you count afterward to figure out why it earned an “R.” It wouldn’t feel short on exploitative elements if more nuanced ones were present, like sinister atmospherics or complex character psychologies. In press materials, the director cites inspirations from Edgar Allan Poe to “Gone Girl,” “Rebecca” and “Rosemary’s Baby.” But while it’s one problem that those influences feel inorganically Frankensteined together in the script, another is that its execution lacks the esprit to make clashing elements work in terms of suspense or sheer style.
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