Six years ago, when the 9/11 attacks were immediately followed by an
anthrax scare, it briefly felt as if the world might be coming to an end — I
can still vividly remember tensing up every time I passed through Times
Square or Grand Central during rush hour. Right at Your Door, a no-budget
indie that depicts the aftermath of a dirty-bomb explosion in downtown
L.A., was no doubt conceived while that sense of futility and paranoia was
still quite fresh — but it didn't show up at Sundance until 2006, and has
taken an additional eighteen months to find its way into theaters, and in that
time our terror has abated to a remarkable degree. Doomsday scenarios no
longer pack the visceral waking-nightmare wallop that they would have not
too long ago.
Even back then, pulses wouldn't likely have been quickened much by Right
at Your Door, given the film's essential (and surely budget-constrained)
staginess. The action, such as it is, takes place almost entirely from the
vantage point of a single ramshackle home not far from Dodger Stadium,
where Brad (Rory Cochrane), an unemployed musician, fritters away his
morning while live-in girlfriend Lexi (Mary McCormack) is off earning the
rent. When multiple nukes go off downtown and fallout starts drifting
toward the suburbs, Brad, unable to reach Lexi by phone, follows the
Emergency Broadcast System's directive and seals off the entire house . . . at
which point, of course, his beloved shows up, covered in toxic ash and
begging to be let inside.
Written and helmed by noted art director Chris Gorak (Minority Report),
Right at Your Door boasts chaotic sound design and a handful of modest
special effects, which together manage to convey a plausible sense of
escalating panic. But Brad and Lexi, who are pretty much the only people
onscreen, do nothing but shriek (she) and soothe (he), and before long you
find yourself resenting having been stuck with two irritating, useless
lumps in this barely precedented crisis. Gripping at first, the film turns
pointless and mundane by almost imperceptible degrees; only at the very
end, with its ironic Twilight Zone twist, do you finally realize that
you've been had. — Mike D'Angelo