At the Devil's Door

I've made no secret about my love for writer/director Nicholas McCarthy's excellent horror film "The Pact," so I was breathlessly awaiting his sophomore effort, "At the Devil's Door."

Starring Ashley Rickards (MTV's "Awkward") and Naya Rivera ("Glee"), the film concerns a teenage girl (Rickards) who is coerced by her new boyfriend to play a game that goes terribly, and devilishly, wrong. When a real-estate agent named Leigh (previous Oscar nominee for "Maria Full of Grace" Catalina Sandino Moreno) is hired to sell the house the girl grew up in, things don't go so well for her, either. Along for the ride is Leigh's moody sister Vera (Rivera), who is the unfortunate bystander who gets wrapped up in all the trouble the other two have already gotten into.

It's best not to know too much going in to this film, as the script's twist and turns are better left to the experience. But just like his first film, McCarthy knows how to use the camera to instill a quiet anxiety in his audience. While characters are on the phone or doing something else fairly benign, he frequently pushes in slowly to a bare wall, then a door, then a window. He mixes that with music and a subtle and unnerving throbbing that leads you down the rabbit hole of dread. He finds the terror in the silent and empty spaces; a trait that harkens back to old masters like Hitchcock and Kubrick. In lesser hands, films about demons and the like can teeter toward cheesiness. With McCarthy at the helm, he has created a chilling masterpiece.

One of his best traits is that McCarthy avoids going for the cheap scares. There are no fake-out jump scares here. If you jump, you jump for a reason. He also utilizes practical effects and sound rather than CGI and bombastic music cues to creep you out. There's one shot that is done out of focus in the background that is one of the most effective reveals in years. McCarthy takes familiar themes -- deals with the devil, haunted houses, and other genre-specific threads -- and gives them a fresh and terrifying new twist. Because he doesn't rely on big budget special effects, when unnerving things happen, they are downright chilling.

The film has three terrific actresses in Rickards, Moreno, and Rivera. It's funny because McCarthy cleverly doesn't really let you know whose story we are watching. All three characters play integral roles, but it ends up being one character's story in the end. Rickards plays against type as the rebellious girl who gets more than she bargained for. Granted, she spends a lot of the film in a trance-like state, but she interweaves a tormented innocence with a demonic air that is satisfyingly disturbing.

Moreno is the more sympathetic character and there are some nice layers to her, but she does sort of hand the film over to other people. The less said about that, the better. Rivera pushes way past her bitchy diva character on "Glee" and while she's still a bit of a darker personality, she gains our sympathy while tying in a vulnerability we don't expect. It's nice to see.

Here's the thing: I don't scare easily, and wasn't shaking in my shoes the entire time, but I did feel that uncomfortable dread throughout that comes with a deliciously good horror film. I even audibly gasped a few times when scary things were happening. That said, after I got home the night I saw it, more than once I got the distinct and terrible feeling I wasn't alone. To me, that's the mark of a truly great horror film.