Now sometimes my system doesn’t always pan out. To “walk the walk” this week I also saw The Other Side of the Door. It fits all the criteria, but as I said, those aren’t about quality.

The film is another family horror film or sorts, but with a different focus. An American family living in India lose their son in a car accident. The mother is so distraught she tries to kill herself. Their Indian house keeper tells her of a magic way she can speak to her son to say goodbye, but of course there are rules. The mother, as expected, breaks those rules. The family is then haunted by the dead son and “strange goings on” ensue.

We’ve seen this before, many many times. This “undead son trope” probably goes back before “The Monkey’s Paw.” I think the film uses the trope effectively, but you can pretty much see what’s coming at any moment. I think horror films about grief are very interesting, so this intrigued me. OSotD owes a lot to Pet Semetary, and there are better films that explore grief in just the last couple of years (The Babadook and The Final Girls). I couldn't help but think of Bob Clark's Deathdream while sitting in the theater. The India setting is neat, but I can’t decide if it is really that important or is it just an excuse to be vaguely racist. I feel like this movie would have worked better if this was 1976.

Despite the flaws, there are things the film does right. We rarely see the undead son, there are a number of set-ups for cliché scares that they don’t follow through on, the mood is fairly spooky, and generally the acting doesn’t suck. Jeremy Sisto, who I’ve been a fan of since Six Feet Under, does a great job even if he seems underused. I’m not sure why this was rated R, though. The violence is no worse than the average AMC show, there is no nudity, and the language is pretty tame.

Basically, it is nothing amazing but I’m sure it will make for a good teenage sleepover viewing in the future. Perhaps not worth the ride, but it’s nice to see something trying to stand-alone. Grade: C-

Here are some songs that got stuck in my head while viewing these flicks:

The Witch