Right at Your Door (2006) • USA

Here's another apocalyptic tale. It's not a great film but its basic premise provides a thought provoking conundrum. A suburban Los Angeles stay at home husband has just seen his city working wife off to work when a couple dirty bombs explode in the city center unleashing a toxic airborne virus. Chaos ensues as the husband attempts to get downtown and rescue, or something, his wife. (The director overused a handheld camera in this first act in an attempt to portray the hoopla and almost caused me to give up on the film.) The city is very quickly sealed off and he is unable to get to ground zero, so he goes back home. The media, when it works, informs everyone to stay inside and seal up their homes, and most importantly, to not let anyone in who may have been infected with the virus. After many hours of franticly duct-taping plastic over all the doors and windows to seal the place up air-tight ... Knock Knock! Honey, I'm home!

So here's the conundrum. A husband and wife are facing the possible end of days, neither knows for sure if either one of them are infected, nor does anybody really know the full effect and extent of the virus. The wife does appear sick, what with the constant retching and all, but love is blind. Does he let her in?

The rest of the film, up to the point where one of the better big twists I've seen in a movie is quickly played out, deals with the answer to that question and its consequences. It also seems like it was shot by someone other than the person who shot the first act. The direction is controlled and captures the emotional intensity of the situation pretty well. And the acting is not too bad. Mary McCormack plays the wife, Rory Cochrane, the husband. There are all the last rites, confessions, and emotional revelations to move the film along to its feature length running time that you might expect in a situation like this, and then the aforementioned twist. If you are the type to guess ahead while watching a film you might see it coming, but probably not. And don't get caught up in analyzing the specifics of virus contagion vectors presented here, they're not the point, they're the plot. Focus on the story of the couple and you might enjoy this film.

★★★