The Black Door (Kit Wong, 2001)

I wonder why The Black Door is so badly distributed? Sure, it's not the best movie ever made, but it's far from the worst one - and it manages to be quite creepy and well-made. There's some problems, but not any that we've seen thousands of times in other crappier films. Yeah, what we have here is another in the genre I call "fake footage", a composite name of everything called found footage, police footage, mockumentary etc etc. The Black Door is little know, but it deserves slightly more attention. I couldn't find it on DVD, so you know where to find it yourself - but the moment it's out on an easily accessible format again I'm gonna get it. 

Steven, an ambitious students, is taken into hospital in deep shock and with marks all over his body. Marks like from claws... or is it it something written on him? A documentary crew, somehow connected to him, continues his research and finds out he's found some very distburing footage. It shows four men conducting a satanic ritual... together with a (constant pissed off) priest they dig deeper into the history of the four men and... well, it doesn't go well. As usual in these kind of movies!

Lets take the bad things first. The actors. Most of them - except the dudes in the old footage - are actually TERRIBLE. Alright, to be fair, some of them are doing okay - but that's it. Instead we get some awfully bad performances from people who obviously don't know how to act. For me, as a very experienced viewer of obscure movies, this isn't a problem - but I can understand it is for a lot of other people. But it's shit they hired so crappy actors for such an ambitious project. 

Somehow the director, Kit Wong, also have a problem keeping the documentary feeling. A couple of scenes seems to be from an ordinary stiff low budget horror movie, which makes me think that this project was a non-mockumentary from the beginning - maybe at the script stage, but maybe because of lack of time and experience some of the normal stuff was left in. I prefer when they keep the style consistent all through the project, at least in something like this who depends on the illusion of reality.

But when all is said and done, this is a fine fake footage film with an original, dark and edgy take on the good old occult themed horror story. It's very well-made, especially the old footage which looks very, very good. Some of the video footage (that Steven took before his... accident) toward the end looks find and eerie. The weakest part is the surrounding material, the newest footage. I don't like how they worked with the sound. The voice of the cameraman (or reporter, hard to say) sounds like it's recorded in a studio - and the rest sounds completely natural and realistic. 

And I never can believe that someone would continue to film inside a room, alone, with a person dying in front of him. I understand what they want with the footage - to create good drama, shock - but it feels very akward. Thankfully they saves the day in the end, in a similar scene . 

I really liked The Black Room, considering it's faults. It's rare to see so ambitious projects, stories where they've worked on the backstory, created footage to make it more real, build a mythology around everything. If you can find it, watch it - it's worth the pain. 

Comments

[Megatron]

"Yeah, what we have here is another in the genre I call "fake footage", a composite name of everything called found footage, police footage, mockumentary etc etc."

Yeah, ok, I think I know what genre you are talking about.

"Lets take the bad things first. The actors. Most of them - except the dudes in the old footage - are actually TERRIBLE. Alright, to be fair, some of them are doing okay - but that's it. Instead we get some awfully bad performances from people who obviously don't know how to act. For me, as a very experienced viewer of obscure movies, this isn't a problem - but I can understand it is for a lot of other people. But it's shit they hired so crappy actors for such an ambitious project."

Well....it doesn´t bother me too much, you get jaded after watching too many obscure films with bad acting.

But of course it´s always nice to see good acting instead bad acting.....ahhahahhahahhah..

Maybe they were friends of the director....?

"Somehow the director, Kit Wong, also have a problem keeping the documentary feeling. A couple of scenes seems to be from an ordinary stiff low budget horror movie, which makes me think that this project was a non-mockumentary from the beginning - maybe at the script stage, but maybe because of lack of time and experience some of the normal stuff was left in."

Could be, also Wong may have been filming for a couple years realizing that fake footage would suit him better and reversed his course.....

"And I never can believe that someone would continue to film inside a room, alone, with a person dying in front of him. I understand what they want with the footage - to create good drama, shock - but it feels very akward."

This happens from time to time in fake footage genre I think.....screenwriters/directors, etc forget to create the right type realism needed for the scene.

But usually the audience is so drawn into the story that it doesn´t matter.

"I really liked The Black Room, considering it's faults. It's rare to see so ambitious projects, stories where they've worked on the backstory, created footage to make it more real, build a mythology around everything. If you can find it, watch it - it's worth the pain."

Yeah some films are worth the it, despite the flaws......good review and thanks.

[gk]

sounds pretty interesting. going to check this out. thanks

[Fred Anderson]

My pleasure! :)