The Boy Behind the Door (2020)

I googled up some yearend best-of horror movie lists and this is the first one I decided to try. The title is somewhat misleading, as there are two boys who are both behind a bunch of different doors, so it's hard to make out the specific point beyond "sounds cool," which I admit it does. These two boys—Bobby (Lonnie Chavis) and Kevin (Ezra Dewey)—have been abducted and are trying to make it alive out of a house of horrors. It's international sex trafficking, we're given to understand, catering to the rich, for those inclined toward topicality in their horror movies. But The Boy Behind the Door is basically an enclosed space kind of hunt and chase exercise (Alien in a true-crime setting), and doesn't do a bad job of it. I didn't think the editing was entirely that sharp because I didn't always understand where people were or the layout of the place but that could have been intentional too (and/or I'm the one who's not so sharp). I will say there are too many entirely gratuitous wounds designed purely for our discomfort, such as one of the boys tearing out a fingernail trying to escape a room. Once, maybe, with this stuff, to set a certain edge. Codirectors/cowriters David Charbonier and Justin Powell reached for it four times by my count, which became merely annoying. Some of the wounds serve the plot, so OK, but others not so much. (Content warning: wounds. See also DoestheDogDie.com.) They weren't necessary because the beats of the chase keep this thing pretty tight. This is a picture not afraid to take some hairpin turns, hit you with surprises, and pull them off. There is a certain surprise right in the middle, for example, but one result is the best performance here, by Kristin Bauer van Straten creating a fearsome never-say-die monster out of one of the kidnappers who occupy and run this hell-house. Even at 88 minutes there were points where The Boy Behind the Door felt like it might be thinking about overstaying its welcome, but overall it's a tidy little ride with some nice ideas to ratchet the suspense.