THE CELLAR DOOR

Greetings humanoids and other sentient entities, and welcome to a new installment for Philm Phreaks. I’m going to be turning my attention to a movie called “The Cellar Door.”  

Just to clarify this is not the movie from 2024 with Laurence Fishburne. This is a film from 2007. I was a little worried going in that it might be a pure torture film. Those aren’t really my thing. As the first scene opened with a young imprisoned woman in pain, that feeling increased. That opening scene finds her escaping, but being recaptured and killed, and we see the killer burying the body in a shallow grave in the forest. 

From there, the film really changes. We watch the killer stalk and then kidnap another woman, placing her in a cage in his basement. Now, it could have gone toward the pure torture film from there, but it doesn’t. That’s a good thing. In fact, I’d say that the bulk of the movie probably qualifies more as a drama than as a horror film. 

We really get to see into the mind of this psychopath as he and his captive play a chess match of wits a lot of the time. There is a lot of depravity to it, but in terms of real violence, there isn’t that much. Instead we see the woman attempting to get the advantage through her interactions with him. 

I’m not going to go into a lot more detail about this to avoid spoilers, but I will say that later it turns into more pure horror, and there is plenty of violence and the body count grows. 

This movie earns points for its unique concept. There are also plenty of unusual camera angles. The acting of the two main performers, James Dumont and Michelle Tomlinson is just about flawless. The movie really works to a large degree because of the high quality of those performances. Don’t get me wrong, the rest of the cast does fine, too. Those two just really stand out as exceptional.

I should add that the movie probably kept the costs of filming down by keeping the cast small, and limiting the movie to just a few locations and sets. That helps to make what was most probably a low budget film look better than a lot of low budget stuff. 

The film is a slow burn early, but once it turns intense, it is definitely gripping. Even when it’s slow, it’s so intriguing. You just don’t want to look away because you are really wanting to know what’s going to happen.While this is not necessarily my first choice for this type of movie, this film really stands out. If you are more directly into this kind of stuff, you will probably like it even more. It’s a great movie.