The Other Side of the Door (2016)

What makes The Other Side of the Door linger is how it treats horror as an extension of grief: the scares don’t arrive out of nowhere, they grow from a mother’s unbearable need to say goodbye. Set against an evocative Indian backdrop, Johannes Roberts builds a humid, uneasy atmosphere where folklore and family pain feel inseparable, and the film’s best moments come from the dreadful intimacy of what’s haunting this home. Sarah Wayne Callies anchors it with a committed, raw performance that keeps the supernatural grounded in something recognizably human, even when the imagery turns sharply macabre. If you want a bloodless, ironic ghost story, this isn’t it—but if you like your thrills threaded with genuine emotion and a steady creep of dread, it’s an easy one to recommend.

The Other Side of the Door is clearly aiming for grief-driven horror, using a mother’s desperation and a forbidden ritual to turn loss into something frightening and tragic. The problem is it plays out in a very familiar, paint-by-numbers way—lots of telegraphed beats and jump scares that feel more like reflex than dread, so the emotional hook doesn’t always land. It also leans hard on an “exotic” India-as-spooky-backdrop vibe, which can come off as shallow or exploitative if you’re sensitive to cultural stereotyping. If you just want a brisk, serviceable supernatural thriller with a committed lead performance and a few creepy images, it’ll do the job; if you’re hoping for originality or nuanced atmosphere, you may leave annoyed.