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The Devil's Doorway could have been the next Exorcist. instead, this 'found footage' style movie that starts strong and spooky, trips over its own stylistic limitations and the plot finds a way to crawl into a hole and vanish.
Set in 1960, two catholic priests arrive at a 'magdalene laundry' (a type of asylum for women) in northern ireland with a 16mm camera to investigate a possible miracle: a statue of the virgin mary that weeps blood. a photo and letter were sent to the bishop anonymously and the nuns running the joint are not at all pleased about it. well they find a bit more than they bargained for and things go spectacularly awry. the place is haunted as hell and the nuns just happen to be hiding a possessed pregnant girl in the basement. long story short, the priests try to intervene and things go even further off the rails.
the found footage thing works well for most of the film, until the climax where you can't see a damn thing because the priests are running around in dark, underground tunnels and the camera gets dragged around like an old gym bag. then suddenly the movie is over and you're just sitting there asking yourself "really?". which is kind of a shame because the premise is good, the acting is pretty great, and everything works, until it doesn't.
The Devil's Doorway is probably scarier if you grew up catholic, nuns are inherently scary in my opinion. the movie reminds me of this story my mom told me where she and my aunt ended up taking my very religious grandmother to see the Exorcist in 1974, not realizing how terrifying it was. just trying to imagine my grandma walking out of that theater makes me chuckle. i watched the exorcist as a kid at a friends house and it scared the bejeesus out of me.
anyways, if you lower your expectations you might dig The Devil's Doorway. i can give it a solid 6 virgin marys weeping blood out of 10. had the ending rocked my world somehow i would have said 8 satanic rituals in caves full of children's bones. side note, the coolest thing about The Devil's Doorway is probably that the lead actor (Lalor Roddy) once had a bit part on Game of Thrones where he tried to kill bran stark. crazy.
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