"Right At Your Door" - - Beta Radiation

"Right At Your Door" is an interesting movie as in it is realistic and frightening until it isn't.

Let me explain.

I slept through 9/11. My alarm clock went off but I didn't wake up. The news reports filtered into my dreams though. I dreamt I was in a burning skyscraper and then a helicopter picked me up on the roof. As the helicopter flew away I could see the Pentagon burning in the distance. By the time I actually did wake up, m alarm clock had either shut itself off or I clicked it off in my sleep.



"That was a freaky dream." I get up, take a shower, and start getting dressed for school when  turned on the TV and saw the aftermath. The towers were already gone. The Pentagon was hit and Flight 93 was no more. Soon began the flurry of calls to my friends and family, many of whom were currently in the Armed Forces.

The next step was calling up my friend Hao to scoop me up so we could go donate some blood. At the time, nobody knew how many survivors may still be trapped in the rubble (Spoiler alert: Not enough). We stop by the blood bank and there is a line of people already wrapped around the building. Americans, as much as people like to trash talk them, know when to come together.

We ended up going over to a friend's house and watching the news as phone calls trickled in from our friends on the East Coast. At one base, our friend said the men were being armed. Nobody knew what was coming next. Was this the end of the attack or just the beginning?

Before I went to bed that night, I was talking to my little brother. I cracked a few jokes because that's what I do, and I made sure he was cool before hanging up. And as I shut my light off to go to sleep, in the room that less than 12 hours earlier I had woken up to this madness, I imagined mustard gas seeping under the door and choking me while I slept.

"Don't worry kid, that's just the usual L.A. smog."
"That's why I'm worried *cough cough*"

That uncertainty of "what is happening/what will happen next" is captured perfectly in the first half hour of "Right At Your Door."  The news is short on details. All they can say for sure is a bomb went off in downtown Los Angeles. Wait, no. Two bombs. They then get a report of a third bomb. A reporter is on the scene describing the panic of the survivors. Smoke pours through the streets of L.A. like tendrils down the congested corridors of skyscrapers. And to make matters even worse, it is soon revealed that the bombs contained some sort of biological or chemical agent. The smoke, the ash, is all toxic and it begins blowing from the city and into the surrounding suburbs.

One of the strengths this movie had is all the visuals of downtown is done via radio. The television doesn't work. I know that this was a budget issue, and if this film had $100 million dollar budget we'd see more. But just hearing it makes it more frightening. Sometimes a film maker can make the budget work for him rather than against him.

Most of the budget was spent on duct tape.

The movie starts to fall apart though once the plot takes place of the chaos. Brad and Lexi are a seemingly happy couple. He's a stay-at-home husband and she heads off to work as the bombs explode. He tries frantically to get a hold of her but when that fails, he hops in his car to find her. However, the police have blockaded the area and anyone who leaves the area is either arrested or shot.

When Brad returns home he is faced with an intruder, a gardener named Alvaro. Alvaro insists he cannot make it home to his wife before the ash covers the neighborhood and that they need to seal Brad's house to survive. After several long moments, Brad agrees to seal the house. His best hope is Lexi will get the help she needs. The worst is that she is already dead.

So I'm going to say from here on out there will be some spoilers to explain why I think this movie started to go sideways. If you want to see the movie unspoiled, stop here. I will wrap up my review by saying "Right At Your Door" is a good movie and worth a watch. It's extremely tense at first but begins to peter out as the clock runs down. The "twist" ending is a little forced, but all in all, it's a good flick for an afternoon. Just be aware it might dredge up some bad memories.

So, a movie generally starts to take a turn for the worse when we began to lose identification with the characters. We all like to see ourselves as Indiana Jones, or Neo, or Fred Flintstone, whatever. Whoever you pick. Even bad guys. My point is that once a character begins to make choices you absolutely would not make under any circumstance the sympathy and identification goes away and you begin to loathe them.

Brad is the ultimate Beta male. He can not make any decision without someone else making it for him. Since he is the narrative voice (very few events take place without him present), we are mere sightseers to his cowardly actions. Sure, the point of being a Beta is most men are Betas, and I tried reconciling that fact as I was watching this movie.

"Well, most people would do that," I thought. "But I wouldn't" Because I was so invested in his situation in the beginning, because I had felt that same sense of helplessness amid chaos, I felt angry at him during the second part of the film.

Lexi comes back home. She was blocks from the first blast and she is covered in ash. She begs to be let back in. He says no. If he let's her in both him and Alvaro will die. He left her some water outside. What a gentleman.

"When I told you I wanted you to use protection I didn't mean this!"

Brad is finally convinced (after Lexi smashes a window, of course.) to open up part of the house to her. A little boy Brad met along the way named Timmy also makes his way to the house. After a day and a long, cold night, Alvaro decides to risk death to make sure his wife is ok. He leaves. Brad and Lexi spend a lot of time talking though plastic sheets and eventually he gives her more access to the house so she and Timmy can wash off the ash in the shower.

That night, another man, a friend of Lexi's named Rick shows up at the house and tells Lexi there is medical help available. They need to try and get there. Brad hates Rick. "He's a scumbag, you told me that yourself!" he hisses at Lexi. "I'm dying, he's dying, what does it matter?" Lexi and Timmy run off with Rick while Brad simply watches.

That's not the end of the movie, but I think that's enough spoilers to prove my point: Brad is a punk. Letting Alvaro stay is the only decision I would have agreed with, but once his wife shows up and he doesn't immediately tear down the plastic is beyond me. If anything, I would have asked Alvaro to seal himself up in a room so my wife and I could be together without putting him in jeopardy.

The idea of being so cowardly, so Beta, as to let another man run off with your wife into the unknown night . . .a man you know is a "scumbag," is a decision I cannot sympathize with. Who fears death so much that they would let their wife die. Who fears it so much that they would even let a stranger's kid die, or even just a stranger? Once Brad started worrying more about his safety than the safety of others, this movie lost me.

I know that most people are like Brad. I know most people would make those same decisions. But people not like Brad find his actions repulsive. After all the build up in the beginning, once Brad begins to "act" I grew less and less sympathetic.

Argh! This review is making me mad! I just had to get up and pace a bit to calm down. Anyways, the movie is worth checking out. It's an interesting concept with a low budget but an intense feel to it. It has a multicultural cast which is refreshing. You rarely see that in low budget films and ever rarer in movies that take place in Los Angeles. It's a sad movie so it's not something you want to watch on a first date, but ladies, if your boyfriend keeps nodding in agreement with Brad's actions, it might be time to find a new man.



Don't worry, future Mrs. Jason Carpenter. I'll protect you.