Producers: Tom Butterfield, Craig Perry, Sheila Hanahan Taylor and John Papsidera Director: Vaughn Stein Screenplay: Sam Scott and Lori Evans Taylor Cast: Scott Speedman, Jordana Brewster, Laurence Fishburne, Addison Timlin, Chris Conner, Katie O’Grady and Randy Sean Schulman Distributor: Lionsgate
Grade: D+
This slick but silly psychological thriller owes a lot to the premise behind Richard Matheson’s 1970 short story “Button, Button,” which was adapted—or more accurately expanded—by Richard Kelly into a bloated sci-fi movie called “The Box” in 2009.
In Matheson’s tale, a young couple in straitened circumstances was gifted by a mysterious man with a strange box. If they pushed a button on it, someone would die, but they would receive a large cash payment. In “Cellar Door,” John and Sera Winter (Scott Speedman and Jordana Brewster), a Portland couple grieving her recent miscarriage, decide to leave the city and search for a suburban house to start a new chapter in their lives. Emmett Claybourne (Laurence Fishburne), a wealthy, cultured fellow introduced to them by a realtor, offers to give them his gorgeous mansion free with one stipulation—that they never open the bolted outside entrance to the basement.
They accept happily (though, one imagines, the upkeep on the place would be enormous), despite misgivings about what secrets might be hidden in the cellar. Sera returns to teaching college mathematics while trying to get pregnant again. John stays home, not just because it would presumably be a long commute to the architectural firm where he works, but because he’s currently under investigation there for sexual harassment (something he’s keeping from his wife). He’s shocked when his accuser Alyssa (Addison Timlin), with whom he’d actually been having an affair, appears unexpectedly at their big housewarming party. To make things even worse, a previous tenant (Chris Conner) shows up with gas can in hand, threatening to burn the malevolent house down, though it’s made of stone.
If this sounds goofy, that’s because it is, but it gets even more so, due to a plot turn involving Alyssa’s disappearance. In addition, John’s obsession with opening the cellar door escalates after he learns that Claybourne’s family abruptly went missing many years before, despite Sera’s warning that doing so would jeopardize their future. A final twist resolves some of the questions the script raises with a grimly melodramatic flourish, though others are left unanswered, which will doubtlessly irritate quite a few viewers who have expended their time waiting for explanations.
It has to be said that the movie has been handsomely mounted, with images that look great thanks to Angela J. Smith’s snazzy production design and Michael Merriman’s glossy cinematography; but the result has a magazine-level sheen rather than the creepy atmosphere one might wish for. Nor does Marlon E. Espino’s score generate a particularly sinister vibe.
And as a result of Vaughn Stein’s uninspired direction and Alex Márquez and L.B. Brodie’s turgid editing, Brewster and Speedman strike no sparks, though both are perfectly adequate. Timlin, on the other hand, is encouraged to overact, and the same is true of Conner as the distraught interloper, Katie O’Grady as a chatty neighbor and Randy Sean Schulman as John’s supportive work colleague. Fishburne sails with polished elegance through a role that requires little more of him than high-toned diction.
“Cellar Door” is a limp excuse for a thriller, too anemic to qualify even as a guilty pleasure.