Cellar Door has an absolute howler of a premise that just … almost … works. Almost.

Jordana Brewster and Scott Speedman star as Sera and John, a married couple who has been trying and failing to conceive, which has understandably caused them a great deal of anguish and stress. In a bid to find a fresh start, they look for a new house, but find that the kind they want in the neighborhood they want is outside of their financial means. Enter Emmett (Laurence Fishburne), a wealthy man who is deeply connected to the community and is introduced to Sera and John by their chatty realtor. He invites them to his enormous, recently restored mansion on a hilltop, and they spend the evening dining and drinking and talking.

And something about Sera and John moves Emmett so much that he decides to literally give them his mansion and everything in it the next morning. It is a literal windfall of epic proportions (never mind how they are going to afford the property taxes, upkeep, and electric bills), and they jump on it. However … there is one catch: They must never, ever open the cellar door. Emmett doesn’t say why, but he insists that it is a non-negotiable and, if they ever break it, the house and everything in it will immediately revert back to him.

All of this happens within the film’s opening 20 minutes, and it establishes all kinds of tantalizing questions that the film may or may not eventually answer. Who is Emmett? Why is he so willing to hand over his house to a couple he just met the night before? Why are Sera and John so willing to accept such a bizarre offer (well, to be fair, John has reservations, but Sera is all in). And, of course, what the hell is in the cellar? Is it full of dead bodies, dirty secrets, or is it just a big, fat Macguffin?

Those locked cellar doors remain central to the film, even as the screenplay by first-time scribe Sam Scott and Lori Evans Taylor (writer/director of the 2022 horror film Bed Rest) starts to wander off into seemingly unrelated directions, notably a huge plot turn involving John’s ex-lover Alyssa (Addison Timlin), who works with him at an architectural firm and is clearly still pining for him and feeling envious of the life he and Sera have built together. When she accuses him of sexual harassment, he is put on leave pending the outcome of an investigation, which he declines to tell Sera about, instead spinning a web of lies to cover up what is happening. John professes innocence, but is he? And what are we to make of the fact that, after he meets with Alyssa in desperation to get her to drop the accusation, she mysteriously disappears and John has four unaccounted-for hours? And when do Sera and John find the time and energy to keep that huge mansion looking so spotless and magazine-layout ready?

The problem with Cellar Door, as you might surmise, is that it doesn’t really hold up under any kind of scrutiny. You don’t have to dig too deep into its plotting to find how paper-thin it really is, even if it might keep you engaged while the plot wheels are spinning. There are some Hitchcockian narrative shifts that come as a genuine surprise, and what it eventually suggests about the human condition and what we are willing to sacrifice in order to “have it all” turns it into one of the most brutally cynical films in recent memory.

Yet, it has a shallow slickness to it (courtesy of cinematographer Michael Merriman) that undercuts its darker inclinations, and you might find yourself wishing that director Vaughn Stein (Every Breath You Take) had made something grittier and more psychologically engaged. Brewster and Speedman are both fine in their respective roles, even if they are clearly a decade or more too old for the characters, who should be younger and more naïve to get drawn into these webs. Brewster, in particular, has a tricky role because she has to play things one way for most of the film and then effect a convincing turn in the third act. She pulls it off well enough, but it ultimately plays as more of a clever shock than the disturbing revelation it is meant to be.

Copyright © 2024 James Kendrick

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