Crew
Director – Aislinn Clarke, Screenplay – Martin Brennan, Aislinn Clarke & Michael B. Jackson, Producers – Martin Brennan, Katy Jackson & Michael B. Jackson, Photography – Ryan Kernaghan, Music – Andrew Simon McAllister, Visual Effects Supervisor – Darren R. Nash, Production Design – John Leslie. Production Company – Northern Island Screen/23Ten/Yellowmoon/Kew Media Group.
Cast
Lalor Roddy (Father Thomas Riley), Helena Bereen (Mother Superior), Ciaran Flynn (Father John Thornton), Lauren Coe (Kathleen O’Brien), Carleen Melaugh (Sister Maria Louise), Charlie Bonner (Dr Cleary)
Plot
Ireland, 1960. Father Thomas Riley is sent to conduct an investigation of one of the Magdalene Laundries – institutions run by Catholic nuns where orphans and unwed mothers are sent. An anonymous letter has been sent reporting that a statue of the Virgin Mary bleeds from the eyes. Father Thomas brings with him Father John Thornton, who is armed with a film camera to record everything that happens. Father Thomas explains to John that he is sceptical of miracles, having never found a genuine one among the numerous ones he has investigated. As they search, it comes apparent that the Mother Superior has a pregnant girl Kathleen O’Brien locked up in a cell in the basement. Father Thomas demands that she be freed, but it soon becomes apparent that Kathleen may be possessed and that there are satanic rituals being conducted beneath the convent.
The Devil’s Doorway was a feature-length directorial debut for Aislinn Clarke, a theatre director from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Clarke had made several short films prior to this and subsequently went on to direct the horror film Frewalk (2024).
The Possession film has been with us ever since The Exorcist (1973). There have been many variations on this. In the late 2000s, the possession film quickly latched onto the Found Footage film – films shot as though being carried by people holding videocameras in the middle of action – with efforts such as Chronicles of an Exorcism (2008), Back from Hell (2011), Anneliese: The Exorcist Tapes (2011), the popular hit of The Devil Inside (2012), The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014) and the unique The Atticus Institute (2015) and Late Night with the Devil (2023).
The Devil’s Doorway takes a focus that you suspect you would have to be Irish to conduct – that of the Magdalene Laundries. These were supposed homes for ‘fallen women’ – unwed mothers, sex workers or orphan girls – that were operated by the Catholic Church through most of the British Commonwealth. These began in the 18th Century before the institutions were phased out in the 20th. Women placed there were confined to an incredibly harsh work regimen where they were in effect slave labour and underwent reportedly horrendous abuse. Ireland was particularly brutally hit in this regard. In 1993, the unmarked graves of 155 women were found at one such laundry in Drumcondra. This led to a public enquiry and compensation of many of those confined.
The film doesn’t quite reveal that it is a possession film until some way in, although it is not hard to guess that that is the direction it is heading. It starts with the initial focus on the investigation into an apparent Miracle and develops increasingly more sinister layers to it. I particularly liked the early scenes with Lalor Roddy who does a fine job playing the role of the priest investigating the miracle and a confirmed sceptic who speaks at length about how he has yet to come across a genuine example.
The Devil’s Doorway is unfortunately operating in a genre that has repeated the same clichés for fifty years. Thus all the scenes with the possessed girl going crazy, levitating, the crucifixes in the room turning upside down and the like are very familiar stuff. Aislinn Clarke does okay with the material but there is nothing about any of it that feels as though it has not been done before.
The drama peters out when it comes to the end of the film. The baby is born and then goes missing. What follows is lots of shakycam running around as the two priests venture down into the tunnels beneath the nunnery where there seem to be devil worship ceremonies taking place. The film ends abruptly as they arrive at an altar with an empty crib and are then attacked. There are no real further explanations about the demonic force, or who was behind the devil worship in the tunnels. For that matter, it is not even clear what the ‘devil’s doorway’ of the title is meant to refer to.
Trailer here