The Pale Door

The Pale Door is a raucous ride through a different type of wild west.

Koontz's command over the material is so absent that it is at times hard to distinguish his film from a spoofy Western-themed fair where a group of friends play dress-up for amusement.

As a B-horror movie, The Pale Door holds its own. As a Western, however, the film struggles.

Prefaced by an Edgar Allan Poe quote that gives the film its title and proves the scariest thing about it, The Pale Door represents yet another stylistic mash-up that ends up less than the sum of its parts.

The whole enterprise would be amusing if it weren't so pathetically miscalculated...There's simply nothing funny or horrific to be found here.

Half revisionist western, half lurid witch thriller, 'The Pale Door' settles in a space where it is disappointingly neither.

I want to live a world with more western horror movies and I want them all to be as fun and freaky as The Pale Door. Yee-haw!

Horror western from Aaron Koontz, exploring responsibility and what it means to be good when one's role models aren't. Slow to start, though tense as it progresses and beautifully produced.

There are some good effects and fans of body horror may be pleased by the inventive deaths, but in the end The Pale Door feels like a wasted premise.

It's an inert, dreadfully dull mess that tries for some From Dusk Till Dawn-style "you thought it was this kind of movie, but it's really this kind of movie" shenanigans, and falls flat.