What’s behind the ‘Cellar Door?’ A wasted premise and TV-movie melodrama
Cellar Door centers a couple who’ve experienced a miscarriage. As someone who’s had to deal with infertility herself, I believe that horror is an effective way to explore themes of parenthood and child loss. Too bad Cellar Door decided to lean into trashy relationship melodrama.
Director Vaughn Stein’s Cellar Door tells the story of husband and wife John (Scott Speedman) and Sera (Jordana Brewster) who, while dealing with the pain of a miscarriage after getting pregnant through IVF, find themselves being gifted the house of their dreams by a wealthy homeowner (Lawrence Fishburne). There’s only one condition: they can never open the cellar door.
That is a really interesting premise. If you’re a horror fan, you might see that synopsis and remember films like The Babadook, Huesera (The Bone Woman), or even Friday the 13th (that whole franchise starts because a mom is grief-stricken over the son who was allowed to die through camp counselor negligence) and think about all the ways in which horror can examine the highs and lows of being/becoming a parent. Cellar Door fails to deliver on that. Sera and John’s desire to be parents takes a huge backseat to 2000s TV movie-level relationship melodrama and a central mystery which becomes less important as the film goes on.
Characters with power and privilege
The film does a decent job introducing John and Sera as they choose paint colors for their nursery. We get a sense of their personalities and their relationship dynamic. They seem like an average, decent couple. Fine.
After Sera miscarries, there’s a brief, 30-second scene where Sera is sitting at their piano looking depressed. She says, “We can’t stay here” (their enormous city apartment). John replies, “I know.” Cut to: them looking for a new house in a more remote location. Why was it understood that the response to losing a baby was to buy a whole new house? What in either of their characters at that point made selling an apartment and going through the rigamarole of a house hunt the answer? Why was there zero conversation or conflict about that?
I understand not wanting to continue to live in the same space where you’ve recently experienced trauma…but believe it or not, lots of people have miscarriages, and I’d venture to guess that most of them can’t afford to pick up and move out of their home simply to avoid the bad memories there. Still, the movie needed to happen.
I thought about the Arrowverse version of The Flash’s “Flashpoint” storyline, where Barry uses his super-speed to time travel and prevent his mother’s death. When I lost my parents, I had to deal with it and learn to accept their deaths while navigating my grief. Most people don’t have superpowers to bring our parents back, and this storyline annoyed me a bit. Powers allow superheroes to believe things like grief and mental health don’t apply to them. They can make it like the tragedy never happened, or distract themselves with high-stakes activity. That works in comics, where characters evolve (and die and are rebooted) differently.
A film or show about actual humans is different. Most people can’t move just because their fancy apartment makes them sad. John and Sera are incapable of facing their grief, choosing instead to dive headfirst into a house hunt and drama. This is a recurring theme throughout the film. Yet, while a good film will have its protagonist evolve over the course of the story, Cellar Door‘s protagonists end the same way they started, having learned nothing.
Why are two women obsessed with this boring-ass liar?
I’d thought a movie about a couple post-miscarriage might have a well-crafted female character at its center. Yet, we’re expected to believe that, rather than divorcing her cheating husband (who lies to her in ways big and small) or working on their relationship in a thoughtful way, Sera would go to…extreme lengths to keep him around. Despite being a mathematician who supposedly values rationality and measured responses, let’s say she’s the opposite of that, and this comes out of nowhere.
Meanwhile, the “other woman,” Alyssa (Addison Timlin), refuses to accept that the man she had an affair with won’t leave his wife and resorts to behavior that is harmful as portrayed. There’s an element of #MeToo in the film, and without saying too much, I will say it wasn’t handled well, and the way it was portrayed gives ammunition to those who believe that most women who come forward about abuse/assault are lying.
Basically, the film’s prominent female characters are “crazy,” which is hugely disappointing. What’s more, they’re obsessed with a man who’s not that interesting. Nothing about John warrants either woman’s strong feelings as he’s allowed to be a walking id, destroy everything, and face no real consequences. The consequences he does face eventually don’t change him in any way.
This could’ve been fine if this story were well-told
These character choices and plot developments might have worked with stronger filmmaking behind them. Unfortunately, Cellar Door didn’t have that. What started as a potentially poignant look at grief turned into a melodrama about two women fighting over a man, and that man bending over backwards to avoid dealing with it.
This is then framed in loftier terms than the story deserves. Not opening the cellar door is supposed to be symbolic of…something? Yet, there’s no real follow-through on that idea. Meanwhile, the film’s TV movie feel goes beyond the storyline. The filmmaking itself (the shots, the color, many of the supporting performances) felt like it would be more at home on Lifetime than as a theatrical feature. And no shade to Lifetime, but that’s very much its own thing, and they know it. There’s a way to handle unstable female characters like this, male characters like John, and a story with this kind of premise that could’ve been compelling. Instead, Cellar Door failed to deliver.
Lionsgate’s Cellar Door arrives in select theaters and on digital November 1.
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