Doors Parent Guide

Life on Earth has always been messy and complicated, and now it’s getting worse. Millions of alien objects have appeared across the planet, defying direct observation and seemingly absorbing a significant percentage of Earth’s population. Scientists dub them “Doors”, as some people have come back through them… although not in their original condition. As the Doors carry out their mysterious business, a number of stories play out: students in a classroom struggle to make sense of the chaos as the doors arrive, intrepid explorers voluntarily enter the Doors to discover what lurks within, and determined scientists make every effort to communicate with the bizarre visitors. But no matter what we do, the Doors don’t seem to be going anywhere…

I don’t think it’s any secret that I enjoy science fiction. And, as a geek, there are a lot of things about this movie that I like. I always appreciate more unusual depictions of extra-terrestrial life, things that are genuinely alien – rather than the typical Star Trek approach of slapping $50 worth of makeup and prosthetics onto some poor guy and saying he’s from another species. Doors deserves extra points for taking a less familiar approach to the possibilities of extra-solar life forms.

But that’s about where my appreciation stops. This movie is, apart from some of the core ideas, an absolute dumpster fire. The biggest stumbling block is the dialogue, which is excruciatingly bad throughout. I had hoped that, since multiple directors worked on the different segments of this story, the quality might improve in different sections. That is not the case. It’s atrocious the entire time.

There’s also a weirdly high amount of profanity, with extreme swear words sprinkled over otherwise innocuous sentences for no reason. I don’t think the screenwriters actually know how to swear normally, because they’re awful at it. There’s a rhythm to human speech, and profanity fits in specific parts of that rhythm. Not here it doesn’t. Thankfully, that’s really the only content concern, with violence, drugs, and sexual material either minimal or functionally nonexistent. But I doubt that’s going to draw anyone in. The film is still a steaming pile of hot gibberish – even if it is gibberish with interesting potential buried somewhere at the bottom of the pile.