When a Greek-produced and all-Greek film sets a pre-sales record, it arouses enormous interest and intrigues you to see it. Unboxholics are Youtubers with a very strong audience base and it was almost natural that there was such a thirst for people to support them in this venture.
Judging by the statistics on their channelon their social media, but also how quickly their site took off, with no crutches, then it’s no surprise that the film has made them since today, which is released in theaters from Rosebud, so many people buy a ticket to see it.
They are extremely popular, they have a big brand at the commercial level, with solid partnerships in the 12 years they have been involved in Youtube and the power given to them by their audience also brought the financial comfort for the Karpades brothers to venture into their first cinematic effort, namely in the field of psychological thriller/horror.
We had the opportunity to see “Don’t Open the Door” before it was released in theaters and from now on we will express what we felt after watching the film, which is directed by Unboxholics, written by Unboxholics and stars the only male role is played by Sakis Karpas, while Fotini Levoyannis stars in the only female role. They sufferedBradley Cooper» commonly, the Unboxholics.
What is the horror of Unboxholics about?
The only two characters in the film are nameless. It is never mentioned. He is a man who lives alone in a house deep in the forest, where he moved when his son died. He has been there for two years, living without internet, without a mobile phone, without a car. Every day he goes out to cut wood and cooks his food in a reed. He has no electricity, only battery-powered devices, and every two weeks a friend of his goes up to the site, he’s the only one who knows about it, and takes supplies. It has no trace of human contact.
One night, as he sits calmly in the dining room eating and reading, a woman knocks on his door and screams for him to open it. He opens it for her and she jumps in, falls to the floor and looks fearfully into the forest, desperately begging him to close the door. There he doesn’t just open the door to a girl, but to a three-day torture.
The girl claims that she is a biologist and that she had gone with a group of three others to study the flora of the area, in the middle of the night she saw something attacking the tents, she screamed, ran and found herself in his house. The next morning when they go to the clearing where he claims they spent the night, there is no sign of human presence, no marks on the ground from any battle.
The man doesn’t get the message and the longer she stays there, the more he will reveal to her about his son’s death. Not that he doesn’t know. He knows it and he knows it. Because he is not human. It is a human vessel of a metaphysical entity.
Despite the metaphysical events that followed that first quest, the lone woodcutter didn’t think he needed to fear her. He thought his fear was moving towards a forest figure and there. It didn’t occur to him that he should never have opened the door. But in the end, he will understand that he had no choice but to open it and accept his end.
Where did Don’t Open The Door screw up?
Don’t Open The Door has a scripted simplicity that allows the viewer to follow the plot development without losing meaning, it has a good number of jumpscare moments, but that is not its purpose. I found the scenes with the man’s dream-visions and the visits to the forest to be the strongest points of the film. It is generally a film that would have been better in a silent version.
But it also has a huge screenplay ambiguity, to the extent that it feels like it has no plot. It’s an allegory, as the story’s juice is revealed at the end, but up until that point there’s nothing solid. Ok, in horror it’s better to never see the horror, but to think that it will appear at any moment, but Unboxholics took it to the other extreme.
The way the movie ends, it’s like it has no end, it’s like it had no middle and no beginning.
And the climax of the story, the last sequence, becomes so flat, without variation, it has no escalation and it is also a bit strange that this extraterrestrial figure appears somewhere in the background, but like a smudge, rather than something more concrete.
Unboxholics have done great in the elements of the film which are also good i.e. direction, shots, editing, their sound is excellent, Kid Moxie has done an amazing score, but the weakness of the script is so great , that the rest cannot maintain the momentum of the film.
There is a rule that a good script elevates mediocre actors and a bad script sinks good actors. Here I don’t know which of the two is true, because we have an actress, Fotini Levoyannis, who holds the interpretation alone, and Sakis Karpas who, in the points he speaks, highlights his own interpretation weakness and the script’s.
The film left me with the feeling that it was missing parts, that I didn’t see it in its entirety, that there was something more, but it wasn’t shown because something broke in the film.
In conclusion, Unboxholics’ film looks to me like a need for them to take a first step to show what they can do if people in the field trust them.
It’s like the first somewhat clumsy step of a baby understanding the properties of soles. And because I can never be the one to take away from people their personal need to express themselves, Don’t Open the Door is a good thing, a good movie. Once it has benefited the creators mentally, that’s where the story ends.
Whether it’s worth going to see it, I can’t say that either. What I quoted above shape everyone’s desire or don’t touch it at all. At the end of the day, they exposed themselves, I’m just here to write about what I saw. Not to judge.
This first venture from Unboxholics leaves me with the impression that they have something to offer in terms of production and direction in this genre, but maybe it would be better if the scripts had an extra participation besides the two of them.
