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Aaron B. Koontz, one of the writers and directors of Scare Package, a popular horror anthology that released earlier this year on Shudder, takes us back to the Old West with his new horror-western film The Pale Door. The story follows brothers Duncan (Zachary Knighton) and Jake (Devin Druid), who grow up to be outlaws after their parents are killed in a shootout at their farm. When their planned train robbery goes awry and Duncan takes a bullet to the gut, their gang must seek haven in a nearby thought-to-be uninhabited town. The gang comes across a fully functioning brothel that offers its services to the gang and a promise to heal Duncan, but the amenities quickly end when the brothel turns out to be the stronghold for a coven witches, hellbent on exacting their devious plans on the group of outlaws.
First and foremost, I would like to give Koontz credit for making a horror-western film. You can probably count on one hand the number of truly competent films in this subgenre, with gems like Bone Tomahawk and Ravenous coming to mind. At first glance, it doesn’t seem like the two genres should blend well together. In fact, they seem conflicting. Westerns are period pieces, and it can become difficult for a modern audience to relate with a society or characters from a time that they have no experience with. Horror, on the other hand, causes the audience to relate with the characters, and makes them feel that whatever is happening in the film could happen to them. In order to make up for the discrepancy, several things must happen. The story needs to be solid, the gore/horror should be turned up to keep us invested, and the technical aspects of the film must be good throughout. It also helps significantly when you have actors who are objectively fantastic (like Kurt Russell in Bone Tomahawk), to gain a little more personal emotion from the audience. I feel like Koontz swings and hits in most of these areas.
The environmental camera work and sets are extremely well-done for the most part. If you are going to present a western, it’s important that the audience gets the lay of the land. The film shows some beautiful shots from its filming locations in Oklahoma and Texas, and the houses and buildings all do the job of making us feel like we’re in the late 1800’s to early 1900’s. I would have liked to see the camera work do more distant shots, as close-ups to characters in intense situations made the film seem modern, like they were hiding things off to the sides of the shots, and this really was just pretending to be the old west.
The acting and dialogue were roller coaster rides. There were some strong performances and dialogue from select actors, and the complete opposite for others. The strongest performances came from Zachary Knighton (Duncan), Devin Druid (Jake) and their adopted father figure Lester, played by Stan Shaw, who I immediately recognized from The Monster Squad. The chemistry between these three characters outshined everyone else. I tried to chalk up other performances to “these are just dumb outlaws”, but some of the dialogue felt silly and forced, that no one would say, or maybe they would, and I just don’t know 1800’s conversation. Regardless, it didn’t seem natural.
The story was mostly solid throughout the film my mind was constantly brought back to Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn. It’s a classic, so it’s a good place to start. The setting and character differences changed it up enough to not feel like a copy. Like the acting, the effects were also a mixed bag. The burn makeup application on the witches’ skin was fantastic. They looked creepy and gave me some serious flashbacks to The Descent. I wasn’t a huge fan of the prosthetics on their noses and chins to give them that Halloween witch look, but I understand it. We need to be able to tell that they’re witches and not just creatures. The squibs and the gore was effective in some scenes, and extremely lacking in others. For examples of both, there was a scene where a character kicks his spur across the web of someone’s mouth and it looked great! Contrarily, there was a scene in the train where a character stabs someone with a knife, the camera zooms in, and a giant, obviously spray-painted prop knife is sticking out of his neck.
The ending was fine, if not a bit anti-climactic. The dialogue was a little cheesy, but mostly effective in giving us just the base amount of closure we need for our characters and story. Overall, Koontz has more hits than misses with The Pale Door. He took on an extremely difficult genre mixture in one of his first films and made a competent product. It’s certainly on the higher-end of the spectrum when it comes to horror-westerns. There were a lot of small errors that built up throughout the film that will fix themselves in future films as Koontz’s experience grows. For the most part, though, I had fun with this one.
The Pale Door is available in theaters, On Demand, and Digital August 21, 2020.
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