Doors are - according to a definition on Wikipedia - movable structural elements for closing an opening in a room. They give us security and control over who we want to let into a room and who not. They give us privacy, which we can also change or leave quickly and easily. Despite their great benefits, doors are often taken for granted in everyday life. Film-makers like to play with this perception and the aforementioned door functions. The door motif is used particularly intensively in horror films. Hardly any other room element evokes so many shivers and frights.
Find out more about the central role of doors in horror films below, if you dare...
Doors don't open by themselves... or do they?
The number one scare factor: doors that open and close themselves. Even in the early horror film about the vampire Nosferatu from 1921, director F.W. Murnau used this film trick as a shock moment. The door motif was then taken to the extreme in 2007 with the horror film series "Paranormal Activity". These films play on our most primitive fears: People's defencelessness while they sleep.
Because of frightening noises in the night, a couple sets up a camera in their bedroom. The camera is focussed on the bed and the door next to it. Nothing happens for a long time. But when suddenly, as if by magic, the door moves or slams shut with tremendous force, the goosebumps factor is high. Not only is the couple sitting upright in bed, but it's also a big shock for the audience.
Doors that move themselves are creepy, as they invade privacy and a threat creeps around your own four walls. Probably the worst thing about it: the intruder is invisible and the protagonists are helplessly at its mercy.
Open the door to horror
An equally popular motif is the menacing atmosphere that emanates from an open door. Horror figures like to gain access to a supposedly protective house due to human carelessness: an unlocked door.
In the film adaptation of Stephen King's novel "The Game", the evil husband Gerald negligently leaves the door of the summer house open. To make matters worse, he dies of a heart attack while leaning over his wife Jessie. However, she is unable to help him or herself, as she has been tied to the bed by her husband.
So the open door becomes her undoing. Because it is easy for anyone and anything to gain access to her house. The function of a protective door is therefore obsolete.
First, a hungry dog enters the house and makes Gerald his favourite dish. Jessie is helplessly at its mercy. And then a disturbing figure walks through the door. A creature half man, half monster. Due to dehydration and lack of food, Jessie is no longer in her right mind: Is she hallucinating or is the man actually real, who walks in and out of the house as a matter of course? Does she perhaps even know him?
Jessie and the audience only find out the answers when she manages to escape and close the door of her house behind her. There is also a strong symbolism in this image - a painful chapter of her life is being closed.
Madness and reality live next door to each other
Shocks, blows, screams - "Here's Jacky!"
The bathroom door scene from Stanley Kubrick's psychological horror thriller "The Shining" is an absolute cult favourite.
Jack Torrance lives with his family in a secluded and mysterious hotel with lots of closed doors. Everything seems fine until the writer Jack becomes delusional and tries to kill his wife Wendy and son Danny with an axe.
Fleeing from her psychotic husband, mother and child lock themselves in their bathroom. Only the door protects them from Jack, who has gone mad. Their hopes are dashed when he begins to smash the white wooden door with its symmetrical panelled design with an axe.
Because at this moment, the door symbolises the last, but fragile barrier between Jack's madness and reality. With each blow, he increasingly shatters his perception of reality.
No other horror film uses the door as a symbol in such a multifaceted and central way as this one. Jack's son undergoes several psychic experiences by touching or crossing doors. Other doors conceal premonitions or past experiences. Stanley Kubrick uses door symbolism so subtly yet impressively that at some point even the audience no longer knows what is reality or madness.
Closed or open: To life and death
Which has the greater scare factor, a closed or an open door?
In many horror films, people are captured and experience hellish torments. One of the best-known examples takes place in a bathroom: the first instalment of the Saw series. The danger here literally lurks inside the room, as the psychopathic kidnapper of two men disguises himself as a shot suicide victim in the middle of the bathroom. As if in a perfidious game, the psychopath watches as the real victims try to escape. The only way out: a mechanical sliding door. But no violent act of desperation helps them to open the door. In this horror scenario, the door clearly stands for a deadly obstacle, behind which life and freedom await. That is why there is a moment of relief when the sliding door is finally opened by a police officer. But entering the room probably means leaving your own life behind for everyone. Because spoiler alert: Neither the hostages nor the policeman survive the game of life and death.
Doors for real life
Of course, it is very impressive how a simple door can evoke shivers and horror in horror films. In reality, they rarely do. However, doors can still achieve multi-faceted effects. Every design, colour or surface changes the atmosphere in the room. How would you like to showcase your door? You can find inspiration and ideas here.
Would you like to take a closer look behind the scenes of the door films? Take a look here.