As someone who has had more than one crazy landlord, I have one very simple piece of advice for anyone looking for a place to live: never sign a lease if there’s a door you can’t get into. Ever! You are better off under a bridge!
A violation of this very basic advice is the entire premise of Cellar Door. The film, distributed by Lionsgate, has a simple setup that is executed confidently by director Vaughn Stein (Terminal, Every Breath You Take). Cellar Door is well shot, well acted, well paced, and will leave viewers lingering with some light commentary on the nature of upper-middle-class America to boot. Still, in running at over an hour and half, viewers who aren’t drawn into the relational vignette depicted here will be left wanting more.
Cellar Door is a film about modern Americana and our leads, playing Portland newlyweds looking to move their life and love along, fit right in as modern sociological subjects. Sera (Jordana Brewster of Fast and Furious, Texas Chainsaw Massacre) is a mathematics professor – logical, rational, thoughtful, but also a little artistic and down to earth. John (Scott Speedman of Underworld) is a thoughtful architect, loyal to his wife and eager to move onto the next stage of his life. Both are a little boring and, well, basic but in depicting these American archetypes with a relatable charm and chemistry, Scott and Jordan will lure the audience into sympathizing with their relationship and perspective.
In the early beats of Cellar Door, breakneck editing rapidly establishes the ambitions of this newlywed couple. A miscarriage upsets their urban complacency, prompting egression into leafy Portland suburbs. Sera and John hunt through Portland’s exurbs looking for something just perfect to crown their happy, if now stunted, marriage. But our couple is quite picky, you see, and so their realtor lets them know they are out of options except for, well, this one giant, reasonably priced, ornamental mansion. But that’s not something they would really be interested in, right?
Enter Emmett, the smooth owner of a beautiful McMansion squatting on the border of Portland’s urban core. Laurence Fishburne (of The Matrix fame) delivers a captivating performance in what is an otherwise quiet role. His early presentation — charismatic, charming, intellectual – disarms both the couple and the audience, sweeping early warning signs about the home and this film’s plot under a blanket of charisma.
Sera and John are floored by Emmett’s poise, and Emmett sees in this couple shades of himself. They’d be perfect owners, he states, but there is just one critical condition: The couple must never open the cellar door that leads to the basement, else the house will be returned immediately. It’s a hilarious request of legal dubiousness, and yet this otherwise brittle premise is one that could only be sold by Laurence Fishburne’s suave confidence.
With the mortgage signed, Sera and John begin their new life as upper-middle-class suburbanites. Almost immediately, domestic trouble begins to unravel, and the movie really begins. Interpersonal tensions at work risk disrupting this new perfect life. Sera and John’s urban chemistry settles into a bored malaise. Both Sera and John begin hiding from each other as the locked door becomes a common distraction – an embodiment of the ways domesticated humans lock and hide their secrets from each other – as their relationship takes a darker turn.
Despite being heavily featured in promotions and teasers of the film, Fishburne is sparsely featured here. Just as he tricks our leads into the suburban dream, viewers are tricked out of a movie ticket. Jordana Brewster and Scott Speedman carry their own, but a sparse supporting cast gives them little to work against. The set – seemingly pulled directly out of a Homes & Gardens feature – gives the audience little to mull over. Clearly leaning on writers and Sam Scott’s background in television scripting, Cellar Door really does roll best if viewed as an extended soap opera. So fans of domestic drama may find something worth watching here, although the film feels more suited to at home streaming rather than on a big screen.
As a thriller, Cellar Door exploits the fears and insecurities of America’s yuppies. Marital bliss hides deeper discontentment. Professional success obscures relational discordance. Homeownership promises freedom, but really just unearths new, stressful obligations of capital management. Suburban living promises escape from stress, but really just jettisons you into isolation and paranoia. This opera will certainly reflect the deeper terrors keeping liberal suburbanites up at night.
To viewers unburdened by these bourgeoise fixations, John and Sera’s situation plays out more like a satire of the deep naivety and self-absorption of America’s suburban professionals. Their pursuit of the perfect life, the perfect family, the perfect breakfast nook, drives them to sociopathic madness. Paint over the holes in your marriage by drowning the walls in beige. Hide the lack of personal fulfillment by basking in the flimsy history of the new home you scuttled into. Lock away the problems in your life and marriage in all that extra space in the cellar.
In an election year that will be decided by America’s psychotic suburbs, attentive viewers will see some well-placed commentary on the madness that exists outside the American urban core. I’m not certain how intentional this commentary is, but Cellar Door watches best as a critique of the yuppies and their insatiable hunger for suburban perfection.
Cellar Door premieres in select theaters and on-demand on November 1st.
