Watch The Door For Free

The Worst Film Ever

It is a performances centric movie

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Artist David Andernach (Mads Mikkelsen) is devastated after his daughter drowns in the family pool. Five long years of misery have gone by. He discovers a tunnel which leads back to the day of the drowning. This time he saves his daughter but ends up killing his other self in this alternate world. He buries the body and starts pretending to be his younger self. His daughter seems to be the only who notices.The movie starts depressed and slow. When he kills his other self, it starts to turn creepy and weirdly compelling. It never really gets intense or scary as a horror. It's just creepy and dark. There is an element of paranoid tension that isn't fully exploited. The older guy isn't threatening enough. It's interesting but needs to be more engaging.

"Die Tür" or "The Door" is a 100-minute German movie from 6 years ago. The main character, David, is played by Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen, already a distinguished Bond villain at this point. But let's talk about this film here. I quite liked the suspense from start to finish. We see a man who has an affair and has sex with his mistress while his little daughter drowns in a swimming pool. However, "lucky" for him, now a couple years later, he runs into a portal with the help of which he can reappear moments before the tragic accident and save his daughter. Next, this film takes on one question I have always been curious about in films about time travel. What happens when you find yourself from that era? And why, so frequently, isn't it happening. Well.. here it does and it has no good consequences for the old David. So, for a large part of the film, the new David lives the life of the old David until things get complicated in terms of a corpse and an aggressive neighbor and his "special unit".This is a a bit of an identity theft movie even, only that he stole his own identity. Mikkelsen plays his part well as usual, but the supporting cast is fine too. Jessica Schwarz shines as the main character's wife. Heike Makatsch has a couple solid scenes as his mistress and Valerian Eisenbart plays her scenes nicely too. I am quite a fan and think she is among the most talented actresses from her (very young) age group. She played in recent years in the "Fünf Freunde" films and I'm sure we will see a lot more from her in years to come. And finally, lets talk a bit about Thomas Thieme. I really love him as an actor and it's bizarre how he is so unknown, even here in Germany, looking at all the famous films he appeared in. Unfortunately, I must say that I was not too impressed by him here. But that had nothing to do with his acting really, but more with the last half hour that I did not like that much really in terms of the writing. I thought this worked best when it was purely about identity theft and the main character's interactions with his family etc. and there was no need to make this so violent with people killing (and trying to kill) doppelgangers all the time.All in all, this is a fairly great film for the first hour or so and okay for everything afterward. I recommend this to everybody who loves German films, love suspenseful thrillers, likes the actors (especially Mikkelsen) in here in other roles or is just interested in the depiction of time travel in movies. Pay attention to the blue butterfly. Anno Saul, Jan Berger and Akif Pirinçci, the people behind the creation of this film, have all worked on other movies I liked, so no surprise I liked this one here as well. Thumbs up, this was a good watch.

Within last decades, suspense thrillers have become trendy, and novelists and screenwriters try to create the source materials as mind-twisting and twisted as possible. While focusing on such a turn/twist, they form rather trivial story around it - intentionally or spontaneously. All this applies to the film in question, where the basic story is rather trivial, with keywords as middle-class family, jealousy, adultery... Well, a certain twist provides additional food for thought and even criminal moments, but all this is often difficult to follow, and collisions between someone and his/her younger version via traveling in time is not too compelling. The ending scenes add some action, but the solution is - well, you just shrug your shoulders...As usual, Mads Mikkelsen gives a strong performance (in German), and there are a few scenes without his presence, but the rest are just good, not more; anyway, admirers of Mikkelsen and/or psychological drama thrillers do probably see more interesting angles.

I saw this film as part of the "Imagine" film festival 2011 in Amsterdam. It's about time travel, and the usual unavoidable paradoxes make me cringe on average. Don't ask me, for instance, how and why the main character moves 5 years back in time to arrive exactly a few minutes before the dramatic drowning of his daughter. Of course (?), he arrives just in time to rescue her and to literally start a new life. And then he suddenly meets his five years younger counterpart...Though similar issues could be spotted at will, this time there were so many compensating factors that I completely looked past them. We see normal human beings act in their environment, a well-to-do villa neighborhood, with no technical hocus pocus in sight. Several moving moments in the story will entertain a wide audience. You have to trust me in this, as I cannot tell more without spoiling.When leaving the theater, I gave an "excellent" score for the public prize competition. The average geek who is in constant need of technicalities and gadgets, won't have much fun. But every other "normal" viewer will be satisfied with the casting, the acting, and the setting. Go see it for yourself, and bring your family with you. Don't be afraid that the usual time travel devices will come in the way, since there aren't any.