The Other Side of the Door (R)
20th Century Studios; Dread Central; IMDb; Modern Horrors; Rotten Tomatoes; Wikipedia
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This came out in 2016, but I didn't see it until 2025. It's set in Mumbai, India. Maria Harwood (Sarah Wayne Callies) is talking with her husband, Michael (Jeremy Sisto), and tells him she's pregnant. Then there's a scene of them walking on the beach, and Michal suggests staying in Mumbai instead of returning to the United States. However, I'm not sure if that actually happened, because it turns into a nightmare. Still, Maria wakes up, and it's six years later. They're still in Mumbai, and they have a young daughter named Lucy. They are mourning the loss of their son, Oliver, who had died not long ago. Their housekeeper, Piki, shares a secret with Maria. She tells her about a temple deep in the jungle where the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is thin. If Maria spreads the ashes of her son on the steps of the temple, then goes inside and waits, Oliver will come to the door and they can talk to each other, so Maria can say a proper goodbye. The one rule Piki insists upon is that Maria must not open the door. Before the scene where Maria goes to the temple, I was under the impression she'd be outside, and Oliver would be inside, but I was wrong. It makes no sense to me that Maria would be inside the temple, because like... how long is she supposed to wait before opening the door? She has to get out sometime. And Oliver had apparently already left before she opened the door. But whatever.

She returns home, and doesn't tell Michael where she's been. But as always happens in movies like this, strange and creepy things start happening. Lucy is the first to realize Oliver has come back. Though he can't be seen or heard, he makes his presence known in other ways. Maria also occasionally gets glimpses of a very creepy-looking woman or something, the gatekeeper of the land of the dead or whatever, who has come to take Oliver back. And Oliver himself isn't really Oliver anymore. So I would have thought it would be good for the gatekeeper to take him back, so he'd stop doing creepy things. But there are also some creepy-looking guys (Wikipedia calls them Aghoris) who are apparently trying to help Maria in some way, by chanting some prayers or whatever, though I'm not sure if they're trying to protect the family from Oliver or from the gatekeeper, or what. Maria doesn't like them showing up all the time, though, she just thinks they're part of all the creepy stuff that's been going on.

And some more bad stuff happens that I won't spoil. I did kind of like the very end of the movie (which is pretty disturbing), and there were parts throughout the movie that were scary enough. But overall it was kind of "meh". Oh yeah, and I also kind of liked that Oliver's toy tiger was named Khan, a nod to Shere Khan, because Maria had been reading him "The Jungle Book".