The Other Side of the Door

India ought to be the perfect setting for a horror movie – all those teeming streets, ancient customs and ghosts of the colonial past. So this American-funded, Mumbai-set ghost story really has no excuse being as creaky and forgettable as it is. It’s the old story of a grieving mum (Sarah Wayne Callies from ‘The Walking Dead’) who makes a pact with dark forces for just one more chance to say goodbye to her dead son. Of course there’s a price to pay: the youngster comes back ‘wrong’, and soon her house is besieged by chanting, cannibalistic religious fanatics.

So tasteless and knee-jerk in its depiction of India that it makes ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’ look like a triumph of racial awareness, ‘The Other Side of the Door’ is packed with scowling beggars, scuttling cockroaches, dutiful housemaids and shady shamans. All of which might be almost forgiveable if it wasn’t for the tedious plot and tiresome characters. Jeremy Sisto barely registers as the dutiful husband, while Callies shuffles through her scenes so lifelessly it becomes hard to tell which one’s the ghost.