“A beautiful, low key thriller – THE ATTIC DOOR is a must see”
Thank you to Marina Antunes at Quiet Earth for such a glowing review of our little film. 8.5/10 is truly an honor and your words melted our hearts.
Opening scenes are a little like first impressions: the good and bad stand out while the mediocre blend together into the background. It’s been some time since a film’s opening stood out. So long in fact that I can’t recall a particularly memorable one in the last few years and then I sit down with a small independent film titled The Attic Door and I see an opening which, in its opening 5 minutes, mesmerized. The combination of framing, music and the confusion of the scene, seen out of context from the rest of the film, are so outstanding that it will be a long while before it dislodges itself from my mind. The same is true for the film.
The potential for things going wrong when working with kids is great, particularly in a movie like The Attic Door which relies solely on the performance of the two children. There are no distractions here: no additional characters to deflect bad performances, little music or action to hide what doesn’t work and they’re unnecessary because both Madison Davenport and Jake Johnson do what many actors can’t: they fill the empty, quiet moments of the story with emotion and depth. Their performances are wonderful and both give off an air of being wise beyond their years.
I loved everything about The Attic Door, the low key score from Kristin Øhrn Dyrud, Scott Uhlfelder‘s gorgeous cinematography which captures the desert in both its beauty and menace, the performances and the delicacy of the story which reveals itself in small measured steps, building anticipation and dread with each passing scene.
Please visit http://www.quietearth.us/articles/2011/08/11/A-beautiful-low-key-thriller-THE-ATTIC-DOOR-is-a-must-see to read the full review.
