A family of three despairs of what waits beyond the red
door, fearing plague and those driven to their most base impulses who will
murder for a drink of fresh water. But when gazing into the doorway…the doorway
also gazes back. Director/Writer Trey Edward Shults tells a minimalist survival
tale mostly set within a boarded-up rural house; a chamber piece of nightmares
and secrets.
*HERE THERE BE SPOILERS
The plot is fairly straightforward but Shults doesn’t give
us much exposition; we have to piece together the images and fragments of
nightmares to come to any satisfactory conclusion.
The film begins with a gruesome sight: a zombie-like man
gasping for breath surrounded by people in gas masks. This man is obviously
sick and dying. He is lifted into a wheelbarrow and taken out into the woods
and shot through the head. His body is burned. We soon learn he was the
Patriarch of a small family that now includes 17 year old son Travis and his
mother and father. This is a bi-racial family yet the story makes no mention of
this fact, it is not a plot device to make some bold statement: refreshingly, it
just is. We then settle into the daily routine of survival and grieving without
much explanation. However, this triptych is much like the Renaissance
lithograph that hangs in the house (Hieronymus Bosch?) that alludes to a world and society decimated
by plague. If the painting seems contrived as a way to offer information
elliptically then it makes a bit more sense later in the film when Travis’
father explains his pre-apocalypse vocation: History Teacher. The next day a
stranger is caught breaking into the house and after a brutal struggle he is
knocked unconscious and tied to a tree outside (in case he’s infected). This stranger soon brings his family of three
(wife and six year old son) into the fold as the six of them try to survive in
their wilderness abode. But this stranger is later caught in a seemingly prosaic
half-truth.
Shults’ taught direction is mostly relegated to indoors:
both metaphorically and physically. He films in 2:35 with mostly tight
middle-shots but I thought this film would have benefitted from the Academy
ratio to be more claustrophobic. The tension seems more imagined or paranoid
between the families than forthright: this lends a very realistic quality to
their dilemma. When your very survival is at stake can you truly trust
anyone…even family? But Shults isn’t just interested in the mundane activities
of survival; he’s more interested in the psychological toll upon Travis. Shults
takes us on a few dream-journeys that belong to Travis’ point-of-view and we
soon discover that imagination and reality have some crossover point. Using POV fade-outs from Travis’ perspective,
we experience some nightmarish images and possible recollections that haunt his
traumatized mind. This would make an excellent double-feature with Michael
Haneke’s TIME OF THE WOLF.
The focal point of the story is the red door: it is the only
way into or out of the house as all other doors/windows have been boarded over.
This door is always locked at night and they never go at after dark. The climax
of the film and its violent third act concerns the mystery of the unlocked door
after dark and the return of the Travis’ dog. This causes panic in the
household as the dog carries the plague. Travis discovered the unlocked door
but swears he didn’t open it. Could the six year old have opened it? Is the
disease (dis-ease) already in the house? Shults shows this from Travis’ POV but
alludes to the explanation a few minutes later. We have already seen into
Travis’ nightmares and his nighttime wanderings and his decisions to disobey
his father (like leaving the room when they’re supposed to be locked down).
It’s peripherally explained that Travis, in a nightmare fugue, left the house
at night and went looking for his lost dog. He brought the dog back to the
house because there is no other explanation for how it entered the initial
threshold. So what does come at night? I believe it’s fairly evident from the
depiction of Travis’ traumatized consciousness that it’s the nightmares and
sleepwalking that comes at night. And this is the fatal revelation that leads
to the final Act.
The third and final Act has the two families split and
locked down in their separate bedrooms. It’s already been explained that the
plague appears within 24 hours so the tension is cranked up to 11. Travis
sneaks out of the room (not following directions) and hears the little boy
crying. This leads to a final and brutal confrontation where the other family
tries to leave the house but won’t reveal if their child has symptoms of the
plague. A shootout ensues and the other family is killed. We suddenly cut to
black and see Travis in bed with the plague, death mere hours away. The film
ends with his mother and father covered in blood, emptied of all humanity and
severely traumatized, starring at one another across the kitchen table.
Travis will die of the plague. But did his parents contract
it? If they survive, is life still worth living? They shot and killed an entire
family of three (like their own) to survive. Where they morally justified? And
was it indeed Travis who brought all of this on unwittingly? None of these
questions is answered by the film’s conclusion. We are left like our
protagonists in limbo and doubt.
Final Grade: (B+)
