Doors: Weird End-of-Days Sci-Fi Thriller Nods to Stanley Kubrick… and Breakfast Club

By Thom Ernst

Rating: B-

The world is on the brink of a bizarre ending, and things could not be more laid-back.

Doors is a quartet of loosely strung-together stories involving people confronting imposing alien monoliths. The monoliths, dubbed “doors” by scientists, are massive black walls that move with snake-like shimmers of metallic magnetic fibers.

They appear by the millions, randomly across the planet, causing mass disappearances and presumed deaths. But nothing to get too worked up over, folks, just world annihilation at its most relaxed.

Doors begins with a drone's-eye view of a wooded area at dusk. It sets an ominous scene of isolation and threat. Then, a man stripped to his underwear ambles into a swamp. On top of these images, the voices of calls rushing into emergency services, citizens struggling to explain inexplicable events. "Should I get my gun?" one caller asks.

But Doors doesn't maintain the energy of its opening credits. Instead, this science-weird anthology goes deeper and stranger than the set-up. Each segment plays out a sedate overthrow of planet Earth.

Doors are the most absurdly imagined alien life-form since The Blob. But not half the fun. At least, not the traditional fun one might hope to get from a movie about Earth under siege. There is humour in Doors, but you have to look for it.

It's hidden within the film's precise aesthetic for the minimal and the ordinary. The film moves at a methodic, almost lazy pace. The dialogue occasionally becomes flowery, and the script is cold and rhythmic as though written by the winner of an Icelandic Haiku contest.

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But are these doors a portal to another dimension? A portal to nothing at all? Or something worse? We have four options.

The first segment, “Lockdown,” directed by Jeff Desom, is a Breakfast Club scenario. Four students—the obligatory cross-section of society—and a substitute teacher over-seeing what appears to be a make-up exam.

After a bit of playful and not-too-convincing character identification—the androgynous teen, the player, the popular girl, the academic—phones begin ringing like screaming robots. Jets fly by, causing the classroom's fluorescent lights to flicker.

The substitute teacher whispers consoling words into his phone before abandoning the students. The students realize that something terrible is happening. Perhaps a school shooter. But their predicament turns out to be far worse.

Desom makes use of the stillness in inanimate objects like a radio, the bland laminated faux-wood cupboard or intense close-ups of the doors themselves, as if everything worth fearing is motionless, quietly watching, enticing victims to step closer.

The second segment directed by Saman Kesh is called “Knockers.” It’s a dime-store Stanley Kubrick weighted heavily by influences from the 3rd act of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Here, a trio of volunteer 'Knockers' (a name aptly criticized by a broadcaster's voice doling out exposition) have 15 minutes to go through the doors and return, reporting on what they see. But the doors' mind-altering ability to twist reality has dark and lethal consequences.

The third act, 'Jamal' directed by Dugan O'Neal, marks the substitute teacher's return (Kyp Malone) from the first segment. He is now a recluse who has located a door with who he can directly communicate. Jamal has developed, in his mind, a friendship with the entity. He invites his ex-girlfriend, a fellow technical geek, to share in the discovery. She arrives, but with a new beau. For a while, jealousy takes a back seat to science. But not for long.

In three segments, the romantic dynamics between characters play a significant role in manipulating whatever game the doors are playing. But the final episode, also directed by Saman Kesh, dismisses romance.

The entire segment appears as a Zip meeting (that's a Zoom meeting with copyright issues). Martin Midnight (David Hemphill), the voice that has been broadcasting background information throughout the film, is now seen video-broadcasting an interview with Alan (Darius Levantè), a delightfully bizarre and creepy scientist, and perhaps cinema's first Zoom (sorry, Zip) villain.

Much of Doors comes across as experimental. But its weirdness, its stone-faced humour, and its none-too-complicated effects can be hypnotizing. Doors is compelling and indiscernibly droll; A 2020 Space Odyssey as mesmerizing as it is strange.

Doors. Directed by Saman Kesh, Jeff Desom, and Dugan O'Neal. Starring David Hemphill, Darius Levantè, and Kyp Malone. Available March 23 on Apple TV, Bell, Cineplex, Cogeco, Eastlink, Google Play, Microsoft XBOX, Rogers, Shaw, and Telus.