The Boy Behind The Door

As stripped down and lean as The Boy Behind the Door is there’s no lack of substance about it. It’s in the subtext that the film’s strength is with two excellent hardcore performances with a tight script and teasing out uneasy images.

Kevin (Ezra Dewey) and Bobby (Lonnie Chavis) are good friends, pre-teens having a lazy day after baseball practice when Kevin strolls off and disappears. Bobby sets out to look for him finding out soon enough what happened when he’s knocked out, bundled into the trunk of a car and locked up in a room in a secluded farm house.

Escaping, Bobby hears Kevin’s pleas and goes back to rescue his pal. There are others present who he avoids and manages to contact Kevin through a ventilation grate, though making a noise he alerts the others in the house.

The tension racks up as Bobby is tracked through the house leading to confrontation, confusion and the revelation that there is another person involved; Miss Burton (Kristen Bauer van Straten) when things really begin to get nasty.

The Boy Behind the Door is a marvellous example of making the best of limited resources by making them work for you. Writer/directors David Charbonier and Justin Powell use the farm house location and with some skill draw every possible tension from it.

A disturbing story unfolds through the subtle use of images and words; it’s never laid on with a trowel: A sleazy room with a mattress and camera set up, and Mrs Burton’s comment to Bobby that ‘they don’t usually want people like you’ referring to the colour of his skin.

The two young leads are first class entirely believable as two friends who would do pretty much anything for each. While Bauer van Straten, who could have hammed this role, plays it straight with an ugly character that has no qualms about what she does, to whom or the consequences.

The Boy Behind the Door will be available on Shudder from 29 July