Right At Your Door

Director:Chris Gorak
Screenwriter: Chris Gorak
Starring: Rory Cochrane, Mary McCormack
Running time: 95 mins
Certificate: 15

Right At Your Door opens with newlyweds Brad (Cochrane) and Lexi (McCormack) on what appears to be an average day in Los Angeles. After breadwinner Lexi goes off to work with an uncharged phone, Brad hears from the radio that several dirty bombs have been detonated in downtown LA. Unable to contact Lexi, he tries to make it into the affected area, but to no avail.

Joined by an uninvited neighbour, Brad follows government advice in sealing the house with duct tape to keep air, and his wife, out. When Lexi stumbles up to the house spluttering and demanding to be let in, Brad refuses to admit her. They must survive on separate sides of the house's walls and sheets of plastic as they wait for help. However, when men in masks arrive, it's dubious as to how helpful they plan to be.

Considering his low budget, writer/director Gorak does a remarkable job of creating a tense and threatening atmosphere. Lacking in special effects, the film instead employs claustrophobic camerawork kept tight on the pair's small area of apparent safety. The radio in the background is very much a character in itself, reinforcing the uncertainties about the situation rather than offering solutions, whilst dead birds covered in the ominous dust falling from the sky show the disaster on the couple's own doorstep.

Also effective is the way in which we're just as clueless as to the situation and people's motives as Brad and Lexi. Being left just as much in the dark as they are, we feel like we're right there with them and share their paranoia about the men in gas masks and whose side they're really on.

The best part of Right At Your Door is probably the first half hour, in which director/writer Gorak successfully sets up the tense scene. We're affected as Brad seals his wife outside and we eagerly await her return to discover her reaction. Indeed, when she does arrive she's none too pleased with Brad's actions and attempts to get in before soon calming down and resigns herself to the fact that her husband was right. However, after this first forty-five minutes the pace drags as little actually happens apart from the occasional passing of threatening emergency vehicles.

After the relative drag of the pair sitting around, the pace steps up again towards in the final act towards a surprise ending which somehow feels less effective than it ought to be.

Working off post-9/11 fears and questioning governments' abilities to handle disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, Gorak's directorial debut is a valiant effort but risks losing the audience's interest after a promising opening.