Save your money for something good and enjoyable

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I wasn't even aware of The Devil's Doorway until someone linked me the trailer on social media. It looked truly terrible but I took that as a recommendation and gave it a go. The film was really oddly hard to get hold of, but upon viewing it I prepared for the worst as the trailer was pretty dire.It tells the story of two priests who are sent to investigate a statue crying tears of blood in a home for "Broken women". You know the drill, weird things happen and everything goes to hell.Irish made this is yet another cliched demonic film with a messy plot and more questions provided than answers. We've seen this before, but done considerably better. Mostly shot in the found footage format so therefore meant we don't see much and experience a whole lot of "Shaky cam". That didn't do the already mediocre concept any favours.Coherent but messy.The Good:The Bad:Things I Learnt From This Movie:If you listen very closely you can hear the exact moment the Priests heartbreaks upon being told there are no children thereChristians still think the pentagram has something to do with Satan

This is a masterclass in how to do a low-budget horrormovie. There is not a lot going on in this movie. Some might even say that it's a bit slow. But since it's a short movie, it doesn't drag out and it manages to stay tight towards the end. The style reminds me of Asians movies like Ju-on, The Eye and Dark Water. There are some really clever shoots and some really effective shoots as well. Extremely well use of sounds and "off camera action". The special effects are done smartly. We the viewer often see very little. This is exactly how to avoid using a lot of cheap and ugly CGI. The acting is good. The mother superior comes of as being 100% authentic.It's almost like 'Dolores Umbridge' in the Harry Potter movies. On one hand you want to congratulate the actress for doing a good job, on the other hand you want to slap her in the face with a chair because you so thoroughly hated the character.There are some flaws. The shaky cam is done to death and annoying as hell. Most of the time it works in this movie, but "found footage" always create some plotholes. I mean, who found this footage? and who showed it? and why are WE seeing it?It also has the same flaw as most haunted house movies: Why didn't they get out as soon as things started to go wrong?, why didn't they call for help? Why would you go around in the dark following creepy sounds? BUT, if you are mature enough to suspend your beliefs for 75 minutes and jut follow the story as it goes, it's a pretty effective horror movie. If you like scary movies, old buildings, creepy nuns and jump-scares this is the movie for you.

Yuk. The handheld camera technique (ala Cloverfield) needs to be banned for horror movies. When someone is chasing you with a chainsaw, one needs to turn off the video camera and stop taking selfies. Premise about the magdalene laundries and the horrible abuses that occurred under the Catholic Church, was a good start to the story. The camera work was distracting and motion sickness inducing, and really too silly and overused to be scary, and ruined what could have been a 4.5 star movie otherwise.

So as you've noticed by the trailer, the film has a unique way of presentation, using the old-school aspect ratio. Its not perfectly clear whether they used real film stock, or created it digitally, but as someone who worked at a film archive, I can attest that they did a pretty darn good job. But is it scary? Is it really like the critics say, that its the best found footage film in years, being a ode to The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby? Well no, its not anywhere close to those masterpieces, but I agree its much better than the found footage garbage we so often see. With a boat load of Hollywood found footage trash, we also get a wave of films made by anyone who has an iPhone, and the vast majority of them are terrible, and while Devil's Doorway is not amazing, its certainly to as bad as I'm used to.But was it scary? Its hard to say yes or no, I would rather say it was hit and miss, some of it got me, some of it didn't. The atmosphere also appeared and disappeared, sometimes it was effective, sometimes it was either not there or was not as effective. Its no masterpiece, but it most definitely had some cool stuff in there. The aspect ratio adds to it, the story its based on is an interesting one (surprised it has been done to death), and some of the plot points, shocks, and scares were alright. Again, alright, not perfect. So don't go in expecting a masterpiece like some critics say, or are paid to say.