Right at Your Door

9/11 changed the world in an unimaginable way – economically, socially and politically. Perhaps one of the most interesting changes, however has been the way in which cinema has changed. Cinema has always been affected by social, economic and political changes or movements and when the 9/11 disaster happened it gave Hollywood an excuse to exploit a new sense of realism that has never been seen before. This is not to say that they made entertainment out of the events that occurred that day, but rather that they had a new way to develop what they already had. This lead to the birth of a new type of film: the contemporary terrorist film.

The way in which Hollywood used this tool was through a strange sense of scaremongering; similar to that seen in other forms of media such as newspapers and televised news. The presence of 9/11 permeates into unsuspected films such as Borat and Man on Wire (the latter example of course is a paradoxical combination of redundancy and obviousness) but the way in which films that deal with terrorism such as Right at Your Door, World Trade Centre, Battle for Haditha and countless other examples are meant to make us reflect on the events that occurred that day and make us seem more socially aware of the surroundings in which we inhabit. Hollywood knows this and tackles it not with subtly and dignity (two things in which Hollywood has never been particularly famous for) but rather blatancy and spoon-feeding.

The notion of cinematic realism is fairly straight-forward: it seeks to make create a sense of familiarity through a sense of constructed elements which are entirely dependent on the spectator. Essentially it is a highly personal affair and is created through what you perceive to be real. For example, Full Metal Jacket is a war film set in Vietnam and most of the film takes place in what seems to be a bombed town in Vietnam. In actuality the scenes were shot in London Docklands and Stanley Kubrick had the town built to appear as if it was in Vietnam. Albeit a very obvious example it is the familiarisation we have with the landscape of the set that make us believe the film is set somewhere it isn’t. The contemporary terrorist film uses a very similar way of providing realism to lure an audience in: it uses well established and familiar settings and scenarios to provide an insight into a very big ‘What If’.

Right at Your Door is an interesting example of this. It uses established realism staples such as hand-held cinematography and unknown performers to eradicate all senses of glorification and replaces them instead with a ham-handed sense of familiarity. What is bold about the film however, is that it never explains who has actually dropped the ‘dirty bombs’ or the reasons to why they have done so. That is something that is not present in many other films of this type, which often opt for weak and half-baked excuses which are presented via stereotypical extremist groups. The rejections of this is what make Right at Your Door all the more interesting. Conversely though, it is something that could be argued about as being utterly irritating because it pushes the focus of the film into the direction of the characters that are ultimately quite dim and not particularly well-rounded. However, for all its efforts and weaknesses the film has a very clever and unique ending which actually seems very plausible. It also has a very bleak feeling to it, much like the other films of this genre, but in all honesty it is something that is admirable about Hollywood for a change.