The film opens like a dream. A red-haired doll, a fogged-up glass, and the sounds of summer mingle with the ticking of a grandfather clock. Miki (Serena Motola), a 27-year-old woman working at an architectural firm, wakes up in her small apartment, pulled from memories still clouded by sleep. Miki’s world is calm and strange, but it will soon be upended by a transformative experience that will change her forever. Miki’s life, a kind of fog blending memories, dreams, and reality, begins to collapse. As she pieces together what happened to her, memories of a wolf bite resurface, but no one believes her.
With When you open the door (とびらをあけたら), Eriko Katagiri offers a film about female isolation that relies on slowness and discomfort.
Slow and uncomfortable
When you open the door explores female isolation and alienation with a haunting singularity. The film imposes a cottony languor, establishing a hypnotic rhythm that is as uncomfortable as it is contagious.
Miki (Serena Motola)
However, this slowness does not serve the film well, as it becomes almost sleep-inducing. While the discomfort felt is a great success, the viewer eventually breaks out of this hypnosis due to a lack of interest. Too little happens to hold the viewer’s attention.
That said, Serena Motola, inhabited by her role as Miki, delivers a striking physical performance, fueled by the haunted reminiscences of a painful past. Despite the scarcity of dialogue, she displays a wide range of emotions while keeping the viewer at a voluntary distance. Katagiri’s talent asserts itself here in her ability to externalize the interiority of her characters, using editing and association to draw us into her universe.
Werewolves
Those who accept being consumed by Miki’s spirit will soon find themselves gripped by one of the most unique retellings of the werewolf myth ever brought to the screen.
The vampire myth has been revisited, as has the zombie’s. Now it is the werewolf’s turn to be given a new lease on life. The Japanese director takes a great risk by stepping away from werewolf movie clichés. Forget the great violence, forget the brutal transformation into a bloodthirsty monster. Here, the lycanthrope blends with the world of metaphysics. Is the creature real, or is it part of the character’s interiority? The damage is more psychological than physical. But this choice is coupled with a lack of terror in a film that is fundamentally intended to be a horror film.
When you open the door veers into magical realism and forgets its initial promises. The result is a film that does not scare or create knots in the stomach, but rather a work that brings something new to a theme that hasn’t seen anything refreshing in over 30 years.
When you open the door (Tobira o aketara) is presented at Fantasia on July 25, 2026.
