Film Review: Right at Your Door
Here is the scenario. It’s a typical, sunny day in LA. Loving husband gets up early to give his wife a cup of coffee before she drives to work. Minutes after she leaves, LA is devastated by a series of dirty bombs causing panic and confusion as the city is shrouded in a cloud of toxic gas. Worried sick, loving husband fails to call his wife and goes out to buy lots of masking tape to protect the house from poisonous ash. Wife comes home later, but is locked outside in case she is contaminated. Call it toxic wife syndrome.
It is not a comfortable experience to watch a film like this under any circumstances, especially with your lovely wife sitting next to you. I kept screaming “Open the door!” at the TV in a tone bordering on exasperation and disbelief. I bet director Chris Gorak had too many glasses of wine at a dinner party and got into a heated debate about the right thing to do in the event of a dirty bomb. Would you open the door if your wife came home after being contaminated by a highly contagious biological terrorist weapen? It’s the sort of moral dilemna that you might hear in a pub between university educated football supporters. It’s mildly entertaining way of passing a few minutes before last orders. To me it’s a no-brainer. Call me romantic and old fashioned, but I would open the door and let my wife in even if it was very risky. I also think that most decent honourable people would do the same for their partners and children.
The film is well shot and captures the atmosphere of fear and panic that would ensue in the event of such an apocalyptic scenario. It is also low key and all the action happens in one neighbourhood, almost exclusively in the house. You get a sense of the husband’s heat, discomfort and uncertainty as he is trapped in his home waiting for the cavalry to arrive or for the ash to go away. For all the film’s good points, I can not get over the central flaw which is that it is absurd for a husband to lock his wife outside in order to guarantee his own safety. It is morally implausible and not very likely. Let’s hope that this moral quandry is never put to the test.
Links:
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