Directed by Vaughn Stein, Cellar Door is the story of a young couple who decided to move to a new place after a tragedy shook their lives. John and Sera began contacting real estate agents, but they just weren’t able to find any good deals. That’s when they got an unimaginable offer, and even they knew deep down that it was too good to be true. By the time they figured out the price they would have to pay to afford such a swanky house, it was too late. So let’s find out what happened in the Cellar Door movie and what secrets were buried beneath John and Sera’s new house.
Spoiler Alert
Why did John and Sera want to change their house?
Sera was pregnant, and she was really looking forward to starting a new chapter of her life. She was excited about the times ahead, and she had already started deciding what colors the walls would be and where they would keep all the things for their kid. She couldn’t ask for anything more from life. She had a loving husband who understood her more than anybody else in the world. John was the kind of man who could be trusted; at least, it felt that way at the beginning of the film. Things were going fine, but then, one day, something happened that changed the lives of Sera and John forever. Sera suddenly started feeling a lot of pain in her abdomen. She called John several times, but he didn’t pick up. Somehow, Sera managed to reach the hospital, and she realized that she had lost her baby. The miscarriage had a huge impact on the mental wellbeing of the couple. They didn’t talk to each other for several days, and they just didn’t know what to do in that situation or how to deal with all the grief. Sera told John that she didn’t want to stay in the same house. She felt that she needed to change her environment to leave the trauma behind. The couple started house hunting, but they didn’t find anything that they liked. That’s when their real estate agent told them to meet her friend, Emmett, who happened to have a lot of knowledge about real estate. She said Emmett knew a lot of people in the area and that he would definitely get them a good deal. Little did the couple know that their life was going to turn upside down the moment they paid a visit to this mysterious man.
What did Emmett offer the couple?
Emmett told the couple that in order to get them a good deal, he needed to know them well. He wanted to know what they were like as people, what struggles they had in their respective lives, and what their perspective was about various things in life. It seemed strange at first, because Emmett was too hospitable and too friendly for a complete stranger. The moment Emmett’s character was introduced in Cellar Door, it felt like he had some ulterior motives behind helping John and Sera and that he was not telling them the entire story. John and Sera had a lovely dinner with him, and then after having a really good time, they went to bed. Emmett insisted they spend the night in his mansion, as he felt that John was too drunk to drive back. John and Sera woke up the next day to find that Emmett was gone. He had left a note where he had mentioned that he loved meeting them and that he was giving his house to them on the condition that they never opened the cellar door. John and Sera couldn’t understand why Emmett would do that. It was a lovely house, the kind they couldn’t even imagine owning, and suddenly, they were being told that they could have it and that too completely free of cost. John felt that there was something fishy about the entire ordeal. He couldn’t understand why Emmett would ask them to not open the cellar door, and everything just seemed way too absurd to him. But it was too good an offer to say no to. John and Sera signed the property documents, and Emmett vanished from the scene as if he’d never existed.
Who killed Alyssa?
We got to know that John had had an extramarital affair with his colleague, Alyssa. He had dated Alyssa before he got married, but he just wasn’t able to put an end to his relationship even after Sera came into his life. Sera, deep down, knew about her husband’s affair, but she chose to turn a blind eye towards it. Maybe she was scared that the image of a perfect family that she had in her mind would be ruined once she accepted the truth. But things did become complicated when Alyssa reported to her HR that she had been sexually abused by John. John was suspended till the office conducted their internal investigation. Alyssa, for some inexplicable reason, was obsessed with John, and she wanted to marry him. She had requested him many times to divorce Sera and start a new life with her. She came unannounced to his housewarming party, too, and John felt uncomfortable in her presence. On the day Sera had a miscarriage, John was with Alyssa, which is why he missed all the calls. Sera eventually figured that out, but again, she chose to ignore it. John met Alyssa after he found out that she had filed a complaint against him. He didn’t understand why she would do that when everything between them was consensual.
One day, Alyssa arrived unannounced at John’s house, and she had an unprecedented confrontation with Sera since John was not at home. She told her bluntly that she was the one who deserved to stay in that house together with John. Sera had a gun on her, and she got so triggered by whatever Alyssa said that she ended up shooting her. Sera took her time, thinking about what she had done, and then she decided to cover up her crime and dispose of the body. She emailed Alyssa’s HR using her phone and applied for a wellness leave. Then she parked her car in the middle of nowhere and came back home. Sera wrapped Alyssa’s dead body in a polythene sheet and put it inside the cellar. She had earlier figured out that John had found a way to enter the cellar from inside the house and used that entrance to get access to the cellar. The police came to John’s house, and he didn’t hide anything from them. Sera surprisingly came and testified in front of the police officers and told them that John was with her the entire time on the day Alyssa went missing. John, till that moment, also didn’t know that it was Sera who had killed Alyssa. Later, after the police left, John lost his cool and tried opening the cellar door. Sera didn’t let him do so as she first wanted to confess to her crimes and make him aware of the kind of consequences his actions could have on his life.
What was in the cellar?
Cellar Door ended on a cliffhanger, and we never got to know what was behind the cellar door, but still, let’s try to figure out what could be the rationale behind not revealing anything and what could possibly be in that cellar. We saw that when Sera and John were having their housewarming party, an unknown man entered the premises. He stood there without saying a word and then apologized and went away. Later, when John went to ask for the blueprint of the house, as he wanted to find a different entrance to the cellar, he got to know that the last owner of the house was a man named Paul MacManus. John tracked down his address, and he went to meet him. Paul was the same man who had trespassed during John’s party. Paul told him that the house ruined the lives of everyone who stayed there. He said that he lost everything due to the negative energy of the house. He said that the day he came there, he announced he wanted to open the cellar as he believed that it was the key to putting an end to whatever was happening there. So basically, what I deciphered from Paul’s testimony was that there were certain supernatural powers or maybe a negative vibration surrounding that place. It brought out the worst in every human being, and then the residents became the villains of their own lives. We saw how Sera went to extreme lengths to get what she wanted and how even John made bad decisions and ruined his marriage. Now John, after meeting Paul, was adamant about going and opening the cellar.
During Cellar Door’s ending, Sera threatened John that if he tried to access the cellar, she would pin all the blame for Alyssa’s murder on him and make sure that he was put behind bars. John was coerced to make a pact with Sera and go back to living his life as if nothing had happened. Now, there could be many theories and speculations about what could be inside the cellar. John had earlier learned that Emmett’s wife and kid had left him 25 years ago, and after that, nobody had ever heard of them. It is possible that Emmett had killed them and hidden their bodies in the cellar. But I don’t think that that was the case. I believe that there was nothing there in the cellar.
Maybe something had happened in Emmett’s life that transformed him into this sociopath who liked testing the individuals and putting them through a test. Maybe all he wanted was to bring out their vulnerabilities and insecurities and make them tackle them. Basically, he wanted to play with their minds and make their lives chaotic. Maybe he hated people being pretentious and dishonest with each other in their relationships. It could be possible that Emmett was betrayed in his life, and the trauma turned him into a sociopath who wanted to make other people go through a similar ordeal. He handed over the keys of the cellar to John and Sera at the end and told them that it was because they had passed the test and obeyed his orders. Another question that comes to mind is how did the man know if the cellar had been opened or not—something that even John thought about for a brief moment. Now, either he had some hidden cameras installed in the mansion, or he actually had some supernatural powers through which he was keeping track of their movements. I personally don’t know what was on the mind of Sam Scott (writer), but the impact would have been better if he had given some answers or at least hinted at the possibility of something happening or not happening. The symbolism, the themes, the suspense, and everything else did not amount to anything at the end, and the film felt like an underwhelming affair, at least for me.
