Parents' Guide to Do Not Enter

When one of the lead characters jokes that their van looks like something out of Scooby-Doo, they get it right, because this is a gorier version of the classic cartoon, monster included. Do Not Enter, which is based on the David Morrell books, goes for a gross-out gore fest crossed with found-footage tension and monster-movie thrills, and for the most part, pulls off all three. It leans hard on tropes audiences already know—the cute lead guy who can fall, get stabbed, get mauled by the creature, and still survive, the beautiful young woman offered up almost like a sacrifice, a setup that goes back at least as far as King Kong. The film clearly is setting up a series without spelling it out for us.

The chemistry between the core four holds the movie together, with Francesca Reale a standout as Cora, playing both the Daphne and the Velma of the group at once, glamorous and funny in equal measure. Laurence O'Fuarain brings real gravitas to Frank Balenger, a mysterious older presence who slowly reveals a complexity that turns out to be genuinely moving by the end. The best performance may belong to Javier Botet, whose creature has no backstory to lean on and still comes across as gross, terrifying, and menacing enough that you want to know more about it. The livestreaming, found-footage setup gives the film a contemporary edge, like The Blair Witch Project for the TikTok generation. It flirts with ideas about preservation and history, with kids using their phones to document a place everyone else has forgotten, most memorably in a scene built around a hidden piece of art in the subway. Do Not Enter never fully leans into that idea, but it's there if the series it's setting up ever gets the chance to dig into it.