The Boy Behind the Door

Directed by David Charbonier and Justin Powell, The Boy Behind the Door follows friends Bobby (Lonnie Chavis) and Kevin (Ezra Dewey) as they’re forced to fight for their lives after they’re kidnapped by a mysterious figure. It’s a promising setup that is, for the most part, employed to wholly (and distressingly) underwhelming effect by Charbonier and Powell, as the filmmakers, working from their own screenplay, deliver a terminally erratic thriller that stretches the limits of credibility early and often – with the central characters’ perpetual idiocy ensuring that one’s efforts at working up much interest in or sympathy for their perilous exploits fall hopelessly flat. (Chavis’ Bobby, in an early scene, manages to get away from the house in which he and Kevin are being held, and yet the powerless protagonist inexplicably decides to return the home to save his buddy.) The far-from-compelling atmosphere is compounded by a padded-out midsection that consists almost entirely of sequence after sequence of the heroes’ skulking, exploring, and hiding within the aforementioned house, and although Charbonier and Powell have infused a small handful of these moments with a palpably suspenseful feel, The Boy Behind the Door, which eventually progresses into a violent yet underwhelming third act, predominantly comes off as an overlong misfire that wears out its welcome right from the get-go.

*1/2 out of ****