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I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Overrated and overhyped

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

To me, personally, Lucio Fulci is (a) God. Regardless of what the haters may say, Fulci – the one and only Godfather of Gore – wrote & directed some of the most brilliantly entertaining, revolutionary and provocative horror movies ever made. He was one of the busiest men amongst the Italian cinema fanatics, with nearly 60 titles directed in a span of more or less 30 years. Almost typical for devoted directors, Lucio Fulci also didn't know when to stop, or just didn't want to stop. Perhaps it was best for him to retire after the insanely gory and brilliant (and semi-biographical) "Cat in the Brain" or even sooner, but Fulci didn't retire and made three more movies of which "Door into Silence" was his very last. This is a very atypical Fulci and – admittedly – far from his greatest work, but I'm nevertheless proud and content that I saw this obscure gem, in spite of all its little shortcomings.For his swan song Fulci returns to Louisiana, previously already the setting of his ultimate masterpiece "The Beyond". After visiting his father's grave at the cemetery, real estate agent Melvin Devereux attempts to get home to his wife, but road works, detours and engine trouble prevent him from doing so. His seemingly endless journey takes him further and deeper in the bayou, where Melvin repeatedly encounters a mysterious beauty and a sinister hearse that won't let him pass. Melvin becomes increasingly paranoid, especially when he suddenly suspects that the cadaver inside the hearse might be someone very dear to him. Who had thought that Lucio Fulci would end his rich and controversial career with a genuine attempt at an intelligent, supernaturally themed thriller? As a die-hard fan, I really wished that our director would have succeeded in astounding both his admirers and his opponents, but sadly this isn't the case. "Door into Silence" contains too many dull scenes of John Savage aimlessly driving around remote areas in his filthy Buick, with monotonous jazz music playing in the background and pointless encounters left and right. The denouement, predictable for attentive viewers, is similar to quite a few other classic and less classic films in the genre. Of course, I can't list the titles of these films as I would also reveal the whole twist ending by doing so. John Savage does his best to add mystery through his adequate performance and Fulci definitely picked out some of the nicest filming locations in all of Louisiana, but it just isn't enough. Like a few other reviewers already stated, "Door into Silence" would have been more effective as a short episode in a series like "Twilight Zone" or as a separate story in a horror anthology. Still, the fact that it's a final and gore-free Fulci effort with a handful of atmospheric moments, makes it worth a recommendation.

For what turned out to be his final project, Lucio Fulci opted for something different, a type of film that he really hadn't made before - a Rod Serling kind of tale of the journey of an American businessman in search of answers regarding his own existence. As this man drives through the Louisiana countryside he encounters a strange woman several times as well as a hearse with his name on the coffin. It doesn't take long before he realizes something is up and he frantically attempts to discover what it is. John Savage is superb as the confused Melvin Devereux, likely the greatest performance of his career that I've seen. He doesn't overplay or underplay, and his reactions are seemingly entirely natural. The other actors and actresses in "Door To Silence" cannot compare to Savage but do very well nonetheless, while Fulci directs with a subtle fluidity and sense of reflective affection which had become increasingly rare for the master after his career really took off circa 1980. This isn't a perfect film, there are a couple of slightly poor edits and several 'what the hell' parts (a motel stay for 15 minutes, a phone that rings before dialing, etc. - although these can be seen as being perfect for the unreality of Melvin's situation). The same camera problem that plagued "Demonia" also pops up in "Door To Silence" here and there, but not to the same extent nor to the film's detriment.Sadly enough, I don't know if this final effort will ever be truly accepted. It's not generally of interest to Fulci's fans as it's not horror, and despite it's artistic cult appeal, Fulci is unknown to the art-house audience (if not outright vilified). It is really a shame that despite the high quality of "Door To Silence", Fulci's name was replaced with a fictional one for apparently some bizarre commercial reasons. "Door To Silence" is a near-masterpiece and more than deserves to be seen, and now can be due to it's very welcome release on DVD by Severin. Check it out while you can, you won't be sorry.

I am in agreement with the general consensus among viewers' opinions regarding this, Lucio Fulci's final film, that it contains a marginally interesting core concept that, drawn out to feature length, is too threadbare to maintain one's interest consistently. Indeed, its often been said of this 93-minute picture that if you were to cut the right 60 minutes out of it, what you would be left with at most would barely amount to something equal to a serviceable Twilight Zone episode. However, I am mildly impressed that at such a late stage in his career Fulci would upset all expectations by making this attempt at an existentialist horror film that is strictly concerned with mood, place and character instead of violence.By the late 1980's Fulci was starting to express his boredom with gore films and even stated as much that the genre was moving in a direction that, to remain interesting, would have to find its horror "from within". Door to Silence was Fulci's first declarative step (or second, actually, as I believe Aenigma follows this trait) toward this new direction, and if he had lived longer I suspect it would have indicated the path his twilight years as a filmmaker would have taken.What intrigues about Door To Silence, at least for me personally, are the film's mood and the uncanny circumstances that the main character, played by John Savage, finds himself puppeteered by. The movie is of a kind I term a "situation film", meaning its unconcerned with linear plot and more concerned about the evolution of a certain predicament and how it affects its protagonists. Fulci's movie is fundamentally about a single tragic day in the life of a man, Melvin Deveraux, a traveling real estate agent currently on a business trip who, for reasons not evident to us and even himself, is drawn to aimlessly traveling about the back roads of Louisiana bayou country. It begins to dawn on us that he may longer be inhabiting the real world. In essence he is dead, a non-entity, and is drifting in a strange limbo through unpopulated wastes while we as viewers are cognizant of it while he isn't. Fulci is admirably able to communicate the strangeness of Melvin's situation in the oddly empty landscapes and roads he travels, the few people he interacts with along the way and the long, unending day he seems condemned to inhabit eternally. Its a day in which the sun strangely never seems to set, an observation which he comments on at one point late in the film.Some of the other posters have commented on the brief sex scene in the car with the girl named Margie, describing it as unnecessary, but I must argue that the scene fits perfectly into Fulci's plan. In the scene Melvin proves impotent and unable to consummate sex with a young female hitchhiker and is obviously meant as another one of the many clues that Melvin is either dead already, or, in some metaphysical way, is no longer a part of the world around him. Certainly its meant to mirror another scene in the movie where he follows another attractive woman to a hotel room believing he is going to have sex with her, only to be thwarted again when she mysteriously vanishes. In the grand scheme of the film these scenes are hardly unnecessary. Notice also the scene where Melvin stops at at an isolated gas station and approaches an odd, taciturn black man seated in a chair who is staring at him strangely while playing a religious musical instrument like some silent gatekeeper guarding the entrance to a netherworld. This scene is one subtle indication among others that Fulci may have had an intention, albeit vague and underdeveloped, to re-imagine his original vision of the beyond as a southern Gothic hell.Meager resources were likely this film's undoing, but I feel that what Fulci was attempting to do here was creditable. In fact, this may seem like an unlikely comparison, but Fulci's movie could be perceived as an Italian relative of sorts to Abbas Kiarostami's highly respected Iranian film Taste Of Cherry. Both films are concerned with distant, disconnected men driving about aimlessly through desolate, nondescript landscapes through the period of a single day in search of their own deaths. The only appreciable difference between them is that in Kiarostami's film the main character was intentionally seeking death, while in Fulci's opus the John Savage character is being drawn toward it unwittingly in a predestined sense, or more likely he is a ghost catching up with the fact that the body he still inhabits is already deceased, much like a spirit trapped within the house that it haunts. The kinship between Fulci's and Kiarostami's films (made six years apart) is so striking, indeed, that I seriously suspect Kiarostami saw Door To Silence and it stuck in his mind. Of course, Taste Of Cherry was a highly honored film in reputable circles that received glowing reviews from major critics as well as winning the Palm d'Or at Cannes in 1997, while Door To Silence endures as an obscure no-budget Italian film made by a director who has always been critically dismissed and ridiculed, supported only by his fans.As far as John Savage's performance goes I think he does admirably well under the circumstances. If his acting here seems rather stiff and unemotional I think it has less to do with Savage's talents and more to do with the fact the script just doesn't give him much to do, again stemming from the fact that Door To Silence is a film not about events, but a condition. However, if one is inclined to be buoyed along by the film's metaphysical implications, then Melvin Deveraux's muted personality and lack of character traits for the viewer to connect with could reasonably be construed as just a result of the transcendental quandary that he is unknowingly a victim of.

As a Fulci fan, I certainly wanted to see his last film. It is not the typical blood and gore, but a supernatural thriller.Melvin Devereux (John Savage) leaves his father's funeral and heads into the back roads of Louisiana, where he keeps running into a mystery woman (Sandi Schultz). After his last encounter he gets behind a hearse and we have a thrilling chase as it will not let him pass. He finally catches up to the hearse and finds the name of the cadaver. When he gets to the mortuary, all the cadavers have the same name.Savage has a determined and confused look about him at all times as he tries to make sense of things.Strange Twilight Zone ending.