To me, the premise lying in wait for those who watch Right at Your Door feels so poorly set up there can be no rewind. This claustrophobic tone poem works on our collective fears with hair-lice efficiency. Curveballs are thrown our way, yet the pitcher remains invisible. When the solid presence of this devilish adversary finally comes out of his ghost shell, I felt uncomfortable. Withholding information can increase torque but where's the dramatic contrast?

Two players, Mary McCormack and Rory Cochrane, dominate the film with a rainbow spectrum of colours. Looking for grief? It's here. Looking for obsession? It's here. Both are dashingly vibrant, wearing out clothes they must have been forced to keep on for the duration.

A visual tapestry this reliant on the colour black would fare better with richer outlines. Today, movies charge forth and Right at Your Door compounds the sense of relentless drum beating. Music by tomandandy punctuates the negative while letting all the air out of the tires. Notes fold into each other, stretching out the hazardous, bleak summer.

A distant cousin, Assault on Precinct 13, erupts like a volcano inside our tinkered memories. Right at Your Door follows the formula as tightly as finely fashioned glass. It soon shatters even more horribly when we realize the house has become a prison.

This could be the start and closing of an anti-government, celluloid, foot soldier's stomp. Tight spaces devoid of air can only suffocate the watcher clinging to flimsy notions of mortality. A better approach would involve more transparency. At least, clean the windows and let some light in!

The man who wrote and directed the film with closed-eye nauseous abandon -- Chris Gorak -- gives comfort to the deadly, immoral impulse of self-containment.

(Released by Lionsgate and rated "R" by MPAA.)