ENTER THE VOID
"Sounds dangerous." So quips Diane, an attractive, pseudo victim persona in 2026's Do Not Enter. If only Diane knew what the heck she was getting into. Rats and falling chandeliers and hanging cellphones oh my!
So yeah, I read somewhere on the Internet that Marc Klasfeld (director of Do Not Enter) has only done music videos and this is his feature film debut. It kind of shows. I mean why does main character Rick (played by Jake Manley) get shot putted from a 10-story building only to recover unscathed? And why can't we just let the whole social media rubbish go (live-streaming, YouTube, video content, etc.)? And uh, what's up with the Crawlers showing their ugly mugs again like it's 2005? Yikes.
Anyway Do Not Enter is part horror and part thriller, with not a whole lot of either to come by. The runtime is 91 minutes, with most of those minutes taking place in some haunted hotel in New Jorsey (or New Jersey, I just wanted to write the former). I mean you'd be better off watching Don't Breathe or mid-2000s The Descent, two flicks that Do Not Enter painfully resembles. At least the continuity would be tighter, the editing wouldn't be so irregular, the dialogue wouldn't be so trite, and the ending wouldn't be so darn elated (and live fed of course).
Helmed by a rookie (Klasfeld mentioned earlier), distributed by Lionsgate (the same people that brought you The Blair Witch Project), and made on a budget of $7 mil ($6 mil more than Blair Witch, that's inflation people), Do Not Enter is about thrill-seeking groups, lots of stashed cash, the supernatural, and ghostly inns. The vehicle despite a few creepy, sanguinary images, fails to shake you as a viewer unless of course you've never seen an independent grindhouse sprucer before. "Do not" look any further.
Written by Jesse Burleson
