Right at Your Door

I was pleasantly surprised. This is not the same as other toxic explosion movies such as Threads (1984), The Day After (1983) and the less memorable Testament (1983). This movie is harder to relate to and did not scare me in the same way. It focuses much more on a close relationship between a couple caught up in a fictional terrorist attack. It is much less about total destructive paranoia and more intimate. The movie is very well made. It looks very believable. The way that the movie has been made feels honest. The relationship is gripping from start to finish.

In Los Angeles, Brad (Rory Cochrane) and his wife Lexi (Mary McCormack) live in the suburb and are in love for each other. Brad is an unemployed musician and Lexi is financially supporting the family. She wakes up in the morning and heads in her convertible to the highway to work downtown.

Brad listens to the news that dirty bombs have just blown up in Los Angeles in a terrorist attack and the authorities warning people seal off doors, windows and any opening and stay home. The desperate Brad does not respect the curfew and drives his car to downtown, but he does not succeed in crossing the police barriers. He returns home and the worker Alvaro (Tony Perez) of his next door neighbor requests protection to Brad. They seal themselves off in the house and listen to the radio about the danger of the unknown chemicals and the panic of the population with the hospitals overcrowded. Out of the blue, Lexi returns home covered of chemical ashes. Brad has to come up to a decision about the unexpected return: should he open or not their house?

"Right at Your Door" is a tense and scary low budget movie by Chris Gorak. The movie is like a theater play and is supported by the outstanding screenplay, magnificent direction and top-notch performances of Mary McCormack and Rory Cochrane. The twist in the end is absolutely unexpected and certainly makes the viewer think a lot about the attitude of Brad and how realistic this story is. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Toque de Recolher" ("Curfew")

It doesn't take a big budget to make a good movie about what it would be like to be in a big city in a terror attack. Terror is after all, a personal emotion. Whatever the state of your relationship at that moment, that's where the picture freezes. You're not fully moved in, you hate your family, you had a fight... that's where things stand when the bombs go off. And if you're not blasted or burned or crushed in the initial blast, and if you're moderately resourceful, you'll find a way to survive -- for a while at least. And then you hope the 'authorities' do the right thing and come to save you. If you've thought about all of these things, you will appreciate how Chris Gorak plays it all out. This is not a movie for everyone. If you want all your questions answered, a big studio popcorn movie is probably more your style. But if you appreciate the exercise of putting yourself in the protagonist's shoes, this is a great ride.

The film opens with an unemployed musician, played by Rory Cochrane who was great in A Scanner Darkly but can't seem to flesh out his hero here past a certain point, showing a tender servile nature by making a cup of latté for his wife Lexi, played by Mary McCormack, who is still in bed. She soon leaves for work and Cochrane is at home alone. Time passes and over the radio he hears that numerous alleged dirty bombs have been set off across downtown Los Angeles. He sees significant quantities of smoke mounting from the city center. His instantaneous judgment is for his wife and her wellbeing so he drives in the direction of the city center to find her.

While it is a small-budgeted dramatic film more than anything it may seem to have pretensions about being, Right at Your Door shows several real matters Homeland Security planners are under immense pressure to handle like the interference with telecommunication because of so many calls, or the worried well who assemble to hospitals and emergency shelters and overpower emergency services, a great deal about the threat of contaminated people coming into hospitals and the necessity for facilities in which to work on decontamination. There are troubles through risk communication to the general public, the dilemma of enforcing containment after a biological attack, and the potential benefit of the Postal Service to circulate medications. It is resourceful to weave these predicaments into a dramatic narrative, a fundamentally theatrical one at that, one that is dialogue-driven more than anything.

However this standard LA-based twist-dependent thriller also uses many erroneous facets like, frankly, the use of the term "dirty bomb," or a biological agent used as an additive in a bomb, and Homeland Security recommending for people to seal a single room sooner than the entire home. Even though this paranoid thriller maintains as a vital element to the story that a virus can develop and become more lethal just by being confined, a virus needs the infection of a living thing to reproduce.

Right At Your Door taps into the present feeling of apprehension brought about by worldwide terrorism, with a fable of an attack on downtown LA that causes a haze of toxic dust overcoming adjacent suburbs, where many people generally feel the safest. Concentrating on a married couple mired in the catastrophe, Chris Gorak's script aims to squeeze frantic drama from a somewhat clever and unquestionably thorny circumstance which perceives Cochrane securely sealed inside his house as instructed by people in charge, when his infected and now possibly lethal wife McCormack arrives insisting to be allowed to enter. Such a strong dramatic conflict needs dialogue, acting, and plotting that are just as strong all the time to make it.

Alas, as the exactly ninety-minute-long film advances and the conflict grows determined upon the catch-22 challenging the fate of the two petrified leads, an excess of humdrum scenes of inert dialogue and some especially half-baked moments that put a strain on suspension of disbelief in the end lead the movie to fail to sustain its tautness.

RIGHT AT YOUR DOOR is the terrifying story of the detonation of a "dirty bomb" in a major city, in this case Los Angeles. It takes us into a suburban home, seals us in with the occupant, and allows us to experience the claustrophobia, paranoia, and tragedy for ourselves.

One of the most unsettling aspects is how Brad (Rory Cochrane) is unable to get accurate information about what has happened. He and a neighbor tape clear plastic over every door and window in hopes of keeping out whatever is in the toxic cloud outside.

When Brad's wife (Mary McCormack) shows up at the door, heart-shattering decisions must be made.

This is an effective, realistic bio-thriller with a wicked twist at the end. It'll have you stocking up on duct tape and 6-mil. Poly sheeting...