Do Not Enter review
Not terrible advice, actually.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Do Not Enter
Directed by Marc Klasfield
Screenplay by Stephen Susco, Spencer Mandel and Dikega Hadnot
Starring Adeline Rudolph, Nicholas Hamilton, Brennan Keel Cook, Javier Botet, Jake Manley, Kai Caster and Francesca Reale
Do Not Enter Review
As I struggled to get into Do Not Enter I thought fairly long about why that was. The movie was fine in a structural sense. It introduces its characters, puts them in a fun location…and eventually introduces some kind of creature to contend with. I’ve certainly liked horror movies that have managed to do less. Still, I found myself on the outside looking in with this one. It has some issues…pacing and character and tonal shifts…but nothing egregious enough to be off putting. But enough to leave Do Not Enter feeling more like good advice than a good movie.
The problems began straight away. We’re introduced to a group of YouTubers who explore strange places on their struggling channel. The opening is pretty upbeat and lively…but you can feel how hard the story is trying to make you like these people. It spends a good amount of time letting us get to know them…which is something movies should do, of course. But the effort seems to overwhelm the fruitfulness of the endeavor. Especially when Do Not Enter finally kicks off its main story and the characters mostly just turn into generic protagonists anyway. In fact, the most interesting character in Do Not Enter isn’t even a part of the long introductory sequence. He shows up just before the main plot kicks off.
Do Not Enter wants us to like this group so much that it sticks a purposely unlikable character into their midst. This will grow into a problem later when that character and his new group show up in the same place our protagonists are investigating. Simply put, they are the most over-the-top dangerously psychotic characters you’ll ever find. On one hand, it gives us people to root against when Do Not Enter turns into a bit of a creature feature. On the other hand, the presence of these nonsensical nuisances undermines any attempt the movie makes to build tension and atmosphere. You can’t feel scared when idiots with guns are running around yelling and assaulting people. You can only feel annoyed.
The location of Do Not Enter’s main quest is a good one. An abandoned hotel said to contain the missing 300 million dollars of a famous gangster. The group (known as The Creepers) decide to break into the hotel and search. Joining them is a man who claims to work for Vice tv…and he wants to do a story about the Paragon Hotel. Many in the group are skeptical that he is who he claims to be…and they’re right. It turns out his wife went missing while doing a story on the famous hotel…and he is looking for answers. This immediately makes him the most interesting character in Do Not Enter…despite spending a long time trying to make you interested in everyone else.
The rival group shows up to be comically (and violently) annoying…but that is hardly the biggest issue The Creepers face inside the Paragon Hotel. Urban legend has it that no one who has sought the missing treasure has ever come back alive. We eventually find out why that is. Scare Value Award nominee Javier Botet appears as something credited as “pale creature”. It’s kind of like The Descent in a hotel instead of a cave. Which is cool. Unfortunately, it’s hard to adjust to the tonal shift towards survival horror/creature feature after watching the rival gang of idiots be loud and obnoxious.
It’s even harder to take seriously the way the story bounces out of its horror aspect to spend more time with The Creepers who make it out of the hotel. It feels like Do Not Enter is trying to set up not just a sequel…but a franchise. The attempt to deliver some tense horror sequences are replaced by the same try-hard routine that didn’t work in the opening.
What does work, however, is the story of the man searching for his wife. Sure, it’s a video game plot. But Do Not Enter handles it a lot better than Return to Silent Hill did. The movie handles enough things well to remain watchable throughout all the little annoyances. It just never manages to stick to a solid tone that allows any specific element to work as well as it should. Do Not Enter isn’t a bad movie. It’s a decent one plagued by bad choices.
Scare Value
Honestly, it’s a little strange that Do Not Enter isn’t a found footage movie. The setup is in place for the concept to make sense. I want to give them credit for not taking the easy road there…and Do Not Enter is a good-looking movie because of it. Praise runs out pretty quick after that. It feels like three disparate ideas were fused together. The over-the-top rival gang…the obnoxiously energetic protagonist group…a slow burn creature feature. Simply put…they don’t work well together. And none of them are even the plot strand that manages to work anyway.
2/5
Do Not Enter Link
Rent/Buy on VOD from Fandango at Home and Amazon
