Review: ‘The Boy Behind the Door,’ a masterclass of terror

I grew up 18 minutes away from Droop Mountain, the site of the infamous Rainbow Murders of 1980. One of my greatest fears as a kid was abduction; from watching endless episodes of Unsolved Mysteries to living in the literal shadow of the local tragedy, my friends and I were always on edge. Naturally, we’d spend countless hours talking about what happened and how, allegedly, the still-uncaught killer made their way down the Greenbrier River Trail right through the center of our town. It runs my blood cold just thinking about it. When watching Justin Powell and David Charbonier’s The Boy Behind the Door, I was once again reminded of that long buried terror and those hot summer nights I would spend walking home from my best friend’s house down the street, darting between amber-lit lamp posts and always feeling someone’s eyes on my back. The team behind another of the year’s finest releases, The Djinn, once again bombard the viewer with heart-pounding tension, dripping atmosphere, and two of the most emotional performances from child actors I’ve ever witnessed.

The film opens in a struggle. An unnamed, mostly unseen, abductor lifts the hood of a trunk, revealing Kevin (Ezra Dewey) and Bobby (Lonnie Chavis) bound and tied, their lips sealed with duct tape. The metallic rim quickly snaps shut, a dreadful sound to punctuate the dire circumstances in which our two young protagonists find themselves. A quick “six hours earlier” pops on the screen, across a dazzlingly-yellow field, and we find Kevin and Bobby traipsing across crunchy greenery on their way to baseball practice. In this brief opening, the best friends talk about running away to California where it’s always sunny, and the afternoons seems to drag along forever. “Friends to the end,” they trade off, further demonstrating their unwavering loyalty to one another. Dewey and Chavis’ instant chemistry is not unlike the scrappy crew from Stand by Me; they are magnetic together onscreen, so when the film nearly rips your heart out, it’s well-earned.

In their playful banter, Bobby chucks the baseball and it cascades down the countryside into a forested ravine, leaving Kevin to chase after it. Things quickly go sideways, and when Bobby goes down into the shade to find him, he discovers the baseball — and much more than he bargained for. Two hands lurch from the periphery, knocking him unconscious against a tree branch. Cut to black and a slow fade in. Bobby is locked in the trunk. He panics, quickly ripping off the duct tape, and tries with all his might to grasp onto the last few breaths he has. His intuition immediately kicks in, though, and he begins slinging his cleated-feet against the trunk, eventually forcing it open just enough to refill his lungs.

Bobby then manages to free himself from his metal cage and darts down the gravel driveway to freedom. Inside, he can hear the muffled screams of his best friend, who we see slithering across the floor in an attempt to get away from his attacker. Perhaps against his better judgement, Bobby decides in that very moment saving his friend is of the highest order. In the next half hour or so, The Boy Behind the Door offers up various puzzle pieces, and it’s up to you to figure out what happens next. A man, simply billed as The Creep (Micah Hauptman), arrives with a wad of cash and hands it to our unknown assailant, who then leaves him alone with the two boys for two hours. Of course, The Creep doesn’t known Bobby is lurking in the cobwebs and tip-toeing around the estate. After The Creep makes his way up to the attic room, where Kevin huddles on the bed weeping, the film suggests a much more chilling undertone around child trafficking and pedophilia. It never goes totally over that cliff; the mere suggestion is nauseating enough.

The two-hour countdown (The Creep has set his watch) ratchets up the tension even more. It’s only a matter of time before their abductor returns, which could very well signal their demise. Two adults against two kids. Those odds are not in their favor. Despite such high stacks, Bobby proves he is more than up to the task of taking care of himself — no spoilers, but any blood that may be on his hands is certainly no fault of his own.

The abductor eventually returns and still remains shrouded in darkness, only shown from the backside or only their hands and feet inching into frame. It’s an intensely effective trick of storytelling, as it keeps you guessing until the big reveal around the 50-minute mark. It’s tough to speak any further on The Boy Behind the Door without diving into spoiler territory, but it’s safe to say the film, much like The Djinn, is a tightly-wound piece of horror filmmaking. There’s even a wonderful The Shining homage (an entire sequence in the bathroom) that never once feels shoe-horned in. More than anything, it shows how much Powell and Charbonier respect the genre’s history, fusing what came before into something truly thrilling of their own. Throughout the next half hour, Bobby races against time and fate, bolting through dusty hallways and crevices, to save his friend, and goodness, it’s a helluva ride.

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