A family is haunted by a group of evil spirits that they accidentally release after finding a mysterious gateway during a hike. They turn to a shaman who must help them save their child and send the entities back to the spirit world forever.

When decorating your new home, if you’re torn between installing beaded curtains or a creepy random door you’ve found in the woods, you might want to forego the door no matter how cool it looks. Just when you think horror movies had run out of scary things to find in the woods, writer/director Billy Chase Goforth comes along with Door In The Woods (2019), an occult thriller where bad things happen to a wholesome family. Distributed by Wild Eye Releasing (Scary Stories documentary), this low-budget indie from a first-time feature-length director turned out to be a fun watch. 

The Eden family has moved to a new town for a fresh start. Father, Redd (David Rees Snell), has a new job as a Foreman, son Kane (John-Michael Fisher) has been accepted into a good special needs school, and mother Evelyn (Jennifer Pierce Mathus) is starting an online crafts store. Things seem to be on the upswing for them, despite Kane having some run-ins with the local kids for him being “different” and the normal struggling to make ends meet. The family decides to go on a hike to allow Kane to blow off some steam where they eventually come upon a creepy door placed randomly in the woods. Evelyn decides that they should take it home to be an accent in their hallway, and after cutting the chains and repainting it, the door finds a place in their new home. Soon after, Evelyn invites Uriah (C.J. Jones) her augur — a religious official who observes natural signs to make predictions — to bless the home, and upon entering, he immediately notices that they have malicious spirits in the house and that they should particularly get rid of the new door that is giving him a bad feeling. 

After her husband is unable to remove the door, Evelyn goes in search of information on local legends and finds old newspaper clippings about missing children at the library. The stories prompt her to go back into the woods, where she finds a woman living alone near the door’s origin. The woman tells her about her own missing child, and how she knew it was the door that was taking children. When Evelyn and Redd return home for the day and cannot find their son they realize that he has become the next victim of the evil behind the door. Evelyn calls upon Uriah to lead them beyond the veil into the world of the dead in order to find the evil spirit that is keeping Kane and bring him home. Though they do find Kane, they must make a deal with the evil spirit and pay a heavy sacrifice in order to bring Kane back to the world of the living.

Sometimes characters make such bad decisions in horror movies that you want to yell at them through the screen. It is part of what makes some horror movies fun, and I definitely had a yell or two during Door In The Woods. One man’s trash can definitely be another man’s treasure, but the door that Evelyn brings into the house has chains on it. Chains, honey! And her soothsayer literally told her the day before NOT to open any doors all willy nilly. Oh well, luckily, she ignored the obvious facts that she definitely should not have brought the door from the woods into their home so that the rest of the movie could unfold. Billy Chase Goforth is a good storyteller and it is obvious that he has a reverence for horror; he uses artsy shots and lack of dialogue to punctuate emotional scenes and he even gets a few jump scares in. Most of the heavy lifting on the horror front was from the music — the all too familiar scratchy cello and ceremonial drums go a long way in establishing an atmosphere for evil ancient spirits.

Though slightly cheesy and predictable I quite enjoyed this movie, mostly thanks to the augur, Uriah, played by CJ Jones. There are not many deaf actors and C.J. Jones did a brilliant job in this role. Uriah was quite a character as a badass, cowboy-looking shaman, and he expertly straddled between outlandish and authentic; I hate to typecast someone but C.J. Jones should be horror’s go-to shaman moving forward after his performance in leading the parents to converse with different levels of the spirit world. The movie only drops the ball with him when he and the parents come face to face with the evil spirit, this part of the séance was the least scary though it had been building up to be the scariest. Besides C.J. Jones, the film also stars Jennifer Pierce Mathus, David Rees Snell, John-Michael Fisher, and Katherine Forbes, who gave okay performances, the family felt dynamic certainly felt real, and luckily the school principal, played by Elisabeth Bate, wasn’t given too many scenes.

Door In The Woods has a similar vibe to Insidious (2010), Amityville Horror (2005), or other spirit-stalked-family films, but Door In The Woods is a tad more cheesy while also being a tad slower paced for the majority of the movie. You know the son is going to disappear eventually, maybe it is because this is seen from a mile away that the film lacked suspense, but despite this, it is overall a good movie. Most of the interesting parts are crammed into the séance, which takes up a whopping third of the film’s entire runtime, and the rest of the film is not scary besides the occasional appearance of child ghosts. It is good for its budget, but much of it seemed liked fluff unless the shaman was in the scene. The true horror is at the end, where we realize how far the parents will go to save their child and the villainy that can be born out of familial obligation. I could see this being turned into a sequel with the son coming back to right his parents’ wrongs, I would be here for it especially if C.J. Jones would make a reappearance! A new flick for all you occult fetishists, Door In The Woods is available on digital and DVD October 29 from Wild Eye Releasing.