"The Boy Behind the Door" a taut, intense, economical thriller

The Boy Behind the Door (2021)

Horror thrillers are sometimes derided when characters don’t make the wisest decisions in harrowing life-and-death situations. Sure, if we wanted the film to end sooner than it does, the protagonist would listen to the audience shouting helpful advice, like finishing off their captor or run out the front door. “The Boy Behind the Door” might be the most smartly handled when a pair of pre-teen boys are the ones in peril. Most importantly, the decisions feel character-based more so than ways to keep the plot chugging along. After all, they’re just kids. 

Writer-directors David Charbonier and Justin Powell send Lonnie Chavis and Ezra Dewey to hell and back, while skillfully having the viewer dig their fingernails into their couch. The two young actors impress as 12-year-old best friends Bobby and Kevin, who are on their way to play in a Little League baseball game until they are kidnapped. When Bobby comes to six hours later in the trunk of a car (with a “MAGA” bumper sticker no less), he kicks his way out and sneaks into a big, dark house on a hill near an oil rig. Once Bobby realizes Kevin is chained up in a bedroom—he is the titular boy behind the door—he will have to evade two kidnappers if they ever want to see the light of day.

Coming off their first-released sophomore effort (“The Djinn”), writing-directing partners David Charbonier and Justin Powell are two for two, cementing themselves as elegant storytellers to watch. The motivations for these child kidnappers are icky and disturbing, but these filmmakers use enough restraint and suggestion to get the point across without being off-putting and exploitative or going in the other direction and diluting the stakes. They also frame one pivotal reveal to subversive effect. All of Charbonier and Powell’s skill for wringing out tension wouldn’t mean as much without two strong child performances by Lonnie Chavis (TV’s “This Is Us”) and Ezra Dewey (who already made an impression in the filmmakers’ follow-up film without saying so much as a word). Being that Bobby and Kevin are “friends until the end” who dreamt of getting out and seeing California adds real weight to their situation, furthering one’s investment in their survival. 

How quickly and thoroughly Bobby can clean up a whole body’s worth of blood on a kitchen floor with two hand towels before someone walks in on him is a bit of a cheat, but that’s one moment where disbelief can be suspended. In fact, a lot of this adolescent-driven thriller gets just about everything else right when chalking up the characters’ decisions to “kid logic.” It’s as believable and unsafe as it should be. Taut, uncomfortably intense, and economically plotted, “The Boy Behind the Door” benefits from sustaining a real-time scenario where we vicariously hold our breath and sneak around a kidnapper’s house.

Grade: B +

Shudder is releasing “The Boy Behind the Door” (88 min.) to stream on July 29, 2021.