Cellar Door is a fairly recent American film which takes a situation with a number of rather familiar ingredients and and manages to make something quite interesting and entertaining out of them. As a result, I found it more watchable than I might have expected, given that the script does have a number of flaws. In a way, it's a Faustian pact story with a difference.
A young couple, Sera and John (Jordana Brewster and Scott Speedman) who have recently suffered a miscarriage decide to make a new start by looking for a house in the country. An estate agent introduces them to a slightly mysterious chap called Emmett (Laurence Fishburne) who makes them an offer that they find it impossible to refuse.
Emmett lives in a gorgeous mansion which has seen some kind of unspecified tragedy in the past. He offers the couple the chance to acquire the house for nothing, subject to one condition only - they must never open the cellar door. Of course, they say yes, but soon John is itching with curiosity, desperate to find his way past that pesky cellar door.
The plot thickens when a work colleague of John's turns up at the housewarming party and subsequently accuses him of sexual harassment. There's a pleasing twist near the end of the film, and it becomes clear that the primary significance of the cellar door is metaphorical rather than actual. I'm not sure everything in the story made complete sense, but there were just about enough interesting developments to keep me engaged to the rather ambivalent ending.
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