Welcome back to Everything But Bone, and today we are delving into an oft maligned genre, the found footage film. Never has a horror sub-genre been so debated, with fans either hating or loving it. I for one am I on the side of adoring found footage films and its sub/adjacent genre, the horror mockumentary. Sure, they are plenty of terrible FFF with all the corny tropes they produce, but you can’t go wrong with the excellent Noroi: The Curse (2005), Lake Mungo (2008), Ghostwatch (1992), The Bay (2012), and of course The Blair Witch Project (1999).
Unlike other horror films, FF films are limited by the technology used to make them. You can’t set one in a time or place where cameras don’t exist. But what if you could set one in the past? Enter Northern Irish filmmaker Aislinn Clarke’s The Devil’s Doorway (2018). Set in 1960, the film is described as being the 16mm recordings of a pair of priests investigating a possible miracle at a Magdalene Laundry in Ireland. Of course, being a found footage film, the priests aren’t going to have a pleasant time.
Besides being a found footage film, The Devil’s Doorway is one of the better examples of religious horror. As someone who was raised Catholic, I am a huge sucker for the genre. Anyone who’s been catholic can tell you about how the sights, the sounds, and especially the smells are perfect for horror. Have you even been into a church when it’s dark? Or gone down in the basement alone? I have, and it’s scary. This is on a purely aesthetic level without going into the abuses in the church, but more on that in a moment.
The Devil’s Doorway has the usual genre expectations, a young and old priest team, satanic possession, and the inherent spookiness of the Catholic Church. But what makes The Devil’s Doorway a step above, is that it is the rare religious horror film that engages with the history of abuse in the Catholic Church. The plot of the film wouldn’t happen without this.
For the unaware, a brief history of the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland: the laundries were places where “loose women” were sent by their families or communities. Inmates were largely unwed mothers, girls deemed “too pretty,” sexual abuse survivors, sex workers, and the intellectually disabled. Inmates were trapped at the government and church controlled institutions, and subjected to hard conditions and abuse of all kinds.
This is not ancient history either, the last Magdalene Laundry closed in 1996 and many women who were imprisoned in one are still alive today. In an interview with IndieWire, Clarke says the 2017 discovery of a mass grave at a former laundry, containing up 800 child remains, helped inspire the plot of the film.
Don’t let the dark history bog you down; The Devil’s Doorway is tightly plotted and terrifying. Father Thomas Riley (Lalor Roddy) and Father John Thorton (Ciaran Flynn) are investigating whether or not a statue of the Virgin Mary is weeping blood. In a nice subversion of the character archetype, Father Thomas, the elder of the two priests, is the world weary one, struggling with his belief in god. Once the pair realizes that the Madonna is truly crying blood, the miracle is only a sign of the horror that’s to come.
Many found footage films suffer from an overabundance of shaky cam. Mercifully that absent from The Devil’s Doorway, footage was filmed on an actual 16mm camera for accuracy and it shows. With minimal need for special effects to create scares, viewers could easily believe in what they are watching. Ghostly laughter, bloody handprints, and underground caves are effective here.
Arguably, The Devil’s Doorway could be considered a bottle episode, as the entirety of the film takes place in the laundry. Like the best of horror story locations, the laundry is a thriving evil presence. In universe b-roll footage is used to show audiences more rooms in the home, while a plot developing conversation plays over it. Religious iconography transposed with the ugly conditions the women work in perfectly sum up the hypocrisy Clarke is pointing out.
The conclusion of The Devil’s Doorway may be a little abrupt, but you can argue that the journey is more important than the destination. As many horror fans will always say, the genre can be used to explore social issues in ways that other media cannot. The Devil’s Doorway is one such film. A lesser plot could have focused on the abusers in the Catholic Church, but the story belongs to the many victims. Aislinn Clarke is the first female director of a horror film in her native Northern Ireland, and this is her first feature. I am looking forward to seeing what she does next. Amen.
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