Directors/Screenplay – Tord Danielsson & Oskar Mellander, Based on the Novel by Verkliga Händelser, Producer – Gila Bergvist Uflung, Photography – Henrik Johansson & Andres Rignell, Music – Jonas Wikstrand, Visual Effects Supervisor – Oskar Mellander, Production Design – Jan Olof Ågren. Production Company – Breidablack Film/Film Capital Stockholm/Gotlands Filmfond/Nonstop Winning Formula.
Cast
Dilan Gwyn (Shirin), Eddie Erikson Dominguez (Lukas), Linus Wahlgren (Fredrik), Sander Falk (The Ghost Boy)
Plot
Shirin and her partner Fredrik buy a new home, one half of a duplex, and move in. With Fredrik away at work for long hours, Shirin is left tending Lukas, Fredrik’s son by his late wife. Shirin becomes concerned when Lukas says he is playing with the boy from the other unoccupied half of the house and believes he has developed an imaginary companion. However, as she experiences increasingly supernatural happenings, Shirin comes to believe there is a ghostly entity living next door.
The Evil Next Door was a feature-length debut for Swedish directors Tord Danielsson and Oskar Mellander, who had previously worked in television.
The Ghost Story is a genre that has felt overused and its clichés churned to a point of exhaustion by too many low-budget films ever since the late 2000s/2010s. It has gotten to the point where I dread having to watch yet another film that recycles the basics without any imagination. The Evil Next Door is another entry but the surprise is that it delivers the goods really well.
Tord Danielsson and Oskar Mellander create an incredibly controlled mood. The light and shadow schemes in the house are deliberated to a point of obsessive perfectionism. Lighting levels are reduced to where most of the film almost takes place in monochrome, while shots are frequently framed looking down long corridors.
Dilan Gwyn comforts young Eddie Erikson Dominguez as they face hauntings
Danielsson and Mellander get great usage out of well overused tropes of the genre – shadowy figure in the corner of the room, tappings at the wall, or boo moments with the stairs of the attic abruptly falling down and things jumping out. They even make the cliché use of loud amplified shocks abruptly jangling an audience’s ears work with some effect. Their creation of such controlled and exacting mood evinces a sense of dread and when they do deliver it is with great result rather than the affectless overuse in other films.
The film also makes great use of a fine cast. Young Eddie Erikson Dominguez spends almost the entire film with an expression of traumatised shock. The one worthy watching is Dilan Gwyn who gives a strong and intelligent performance and you suspect will go onto greater things.
