[Fantastic Fest 2020 Review] The Boy Behind the Door is a Surprising and Intense Debut

I won’t waste time because The Boy Behind the Door sure doesn’t. This debut feature by writers/directors Justin Powell and David Charbonier is about a very unsavory and repulsive subject: child trafficking. This subject is a minefield to navigate because of various sensitivities from the very real aspects of child endangerment to more literary ones, such as the “predatory gay” trope that litters fiction. Somehow, though, Justin and David manage to sidestep most of them and focus on telling an intense and vicious story of survival and friendship.

Bobby (Lonnie Chavis) and Kevin (Ezra Dewey) are best friends; the kind that can lie down in an idyllic field and make plans to escape their town for someone with a beach and where the sun’s always shining. They have a familiar comfortability together and their bonds of friendship feel deeper than typical best friends. One day while casually tossing a baseball ball back and forth, an errant toss sends the ball down a hill. Kevin goes to retrieve it and doesn’t come back. Bobby then goes looking for Kevin and is brutally smashed against a tree and knocked unconscious.

They wake up screaming and duct-taped in the trunk of a car parked outside a giant brick house and some unseen assailant drags Kevin, kicking and screaming, from the trunk before slamming the lid and leaving Bobby alone in the dark. Fortunately, Bobby is resourceful and manages to kick his way out of the old car trunk and takes off running. But as he’s making his escape he hears Kevin screaming while pictures of his friend flash in his mind. He can’t leave Kevin.

So he makes the incredibly brave and terrifying choice to step inside the kidnapper’s home in an attempt to rescue his friend.

The Boy Behind the Door is an incredibly intense film that brought to mind the reverse home invasion setup of Don’t Breathe...except instead of our heroes being crooks and thieves, it’s a twelve-year-old boy who is way out of his depth. The tension is palpable, heightened by fantastic sound design that renders each footstep and each creaking floorboard of the old house a potential death sentence. Because he is just a kid, the mistakes that would normally cause a horror fan to shout “oh come on!” feel authentic and consistently amp up the tension. 

From Bobby having to figure out how a rotary landline works to covering up his bloody tracks, the film finds ways to constantly put its heroes in fraught-filled situations. The narrative finds intriguing ways of ratcheting up the tension from scene to scene and when the violence comes, it hits hard. I was surprised to see the directors really put their protagonists through their paces, throwing violence and and painful situations at them with wild abandon. Lonnie Chavis turns out a revelatory performance as Bobby. He’s in pretty much every scene and he acts with an edge that belies his young age. 

After the midpoint, the narrative does run a bit out of steam as it starts throwing around some predictable plot developments and resolutions. I also wish the directors had cut the beginning and ending scenes and focused instead on the oppressive and uncertain situation the two kids found themselves in. Yet, The Boy Behind the Door is an effective thrilling that had me gasping every time Bobby made a mistake or made a noise. It’s a surprising debut that promises a huge career in horror for Justin Powell and David Charbonier.