Don’t Knock Twice (2017) Review!!!

Synopsis – A mother desperate to reconnect with her troubled daughter becomes embroiled in the urban legend of a demonic witch.

My Take – Most filmmakers don’t understand that for a good horror film to succeed the script has to be used to set the right mood & atmosphere to create the terror film going audience pays to expect. While, some directors with a clearer vision & flair manage to elevate the film from their sub-par scripts, others just can’t, and this film is a perfect example of this case. Right from the trailers, it was evident that this sophomore effort from director Caradog W. James (after 2013’sThe Machine) seemed like just another predictable horror thrillers that focuses on a mother and a daughter re-establishing their relationship with one another as supernatural forces try to tear them apart and of course loaded with expected genre norms. But where the film lacks in originality, it makes up for in creativity thanks to its direction. This is the second film in a row where the director has proven himself a talented orchestrator of complex low-budget genre fare, wringing the most out of a limited budget through moxie and smart casting. He takes a story that almost immediately plunges viewers into an unexplained and messy mythology and, for the better part of an hour, manages to distract from its weaker aspects by implying something far more interesting. Like a grab bag of horror sub-genres and conventions, there’s nothing too familiar or unfamiliar that the film won’t use in an attempt to scare its audience. There are mirrors and lighting effects, haunted houses, old hags, a distinct Japanese influence and even some Skype-horror. It’s a tour of the genre both old and new. Unfortunately, then the third act happens, and everything falls apart.

The story follows Jess (Katee Sackhoff), a famed sculptor and a troubled mother who is attempting to regain custody of her now teenage daughter, Chloe (Lucy Boynton), who she was previously forced to place into care due to her excessive drug abuse. Jess has turned her life around — her house can only serve soft drinks now, she says when she’s tempted to take a sip of something stronger. Jess has married a wealthy banker, Ben (Richard Mylan) and moved back to England to try to reconnect with Chloe, who has lived in a group home since she was small. This gesture is too little, too late for the understandably defensive Chloe, who dismisses the idea of living with her mother again out of hand in an early scene. Jess is unaware of the trauma that accompanied Chloe’s upbringing. It included the abduction and murder of her friend when they were 10, and Chloe’s role in the demonization of an Eastern European immigrant woman, Mary Aminov (Ania Marson) who lived near the group home and was a suspect in the case, who later ended up killing herself. In the present, Chloe finds herself in trouble again after she and her friend Danny (Jordan Bolger) sneak into the same old and wake the rumored witch ghost of Mary by knocking on the door twice. Left with no choice after Danny goes missing, Chloe moves to Jess’s enormous country house. As Ben must leave the country for a few days on business, leaving the estranged daughter and mother alone to uncomfortably reckon with their past, a red-haired ghost woman wanders the halls of the home threatening all kinds of harm. The film does nothing that has not been done before. That said, what it does do, it does awfully well. The film makes use of lighting and mirror effects, old crazy women, the camera being used to show the perspective of paranormal beings, etc. Everything does feel familiar but still raises tension in a manner that’ll make you watch the whole film. Most of the horror is built through creating a sense of dread and anticipation which works really well. This is a very atmospheric horror, sounds as well as visuals, play a key part in its success. As does things hinted at or glimpsed, as well as things that are seen. In its first hour, the film is repeatedly pushed in more compelling directions thanks to his directorial élan. Until some late-in-the-game reveals, the narrative is standard-issue hokum. The death of an oddball woman has been turned into an urban legend by local children, who say that by knocking on the front door of the deceased’s abandoned and decaying home—once to wake her, twice to summon—her malevolent ghost will spirit you away. From here, the jump scares and bumps in the night begin in earnest, and while James has a talent for the traditional methods of goosing an audience, his real facility is in laying the focus squarely on the fractured relationship between parent and child. It’s a story of trust and relationship building under extreme circumstances. In this case, the duo goes from flight to fight as a team. It’s nice to see two women working together and not tearing each other down or worse, with just one who’s being vacuous and half naked. I applaud screenwriters Mark Huckerby and Nick Ostler for making these grown up choices. But, somehow it seems duo are more concerned with rug-pulling “gotcha” moments than fully exploring what it means for these women to reconnect after a lifetime of mutual pain. Like the recent horror film “The Monster” it strains to deliver more than your average body count fare. It partially succeeds, thanks to the actresses’ work and the amount of screen time devoted to their rickety bond. One of the film’s greatest weaknesses is an inability to flesh out and sustain the witch’s motivations. Chloe’s first action is to summon a discount exorcist in midnight-black, evil-hag mode. Beckon the creature first, explain back story later—except, it’s not until much later that bewitching plot elements begin to take ghastly form. Back story upon back story gets ladled on, complicating the plot in a manner that is supposed to come together at the conclusion which arrives too hurriedly.

There are several over-the-top twists, including one soon reversed, each more enjoyable than anything that came before just for the displays of verve and attempts at fresh ideas. Explanations play second-fiddle to a few atmospheric set-pieces, as if the film was focused on visuals, only to connect the dots at a later date. These storylines—a drama of reconciliation and a tale of demon-stalking—are adequate on their own but fail to inform or intensify each other in any theme-deepening or character-developing ways, which is to say that this Welsh ghost story adds up to less than the sum of its parts. The film’s silly moral, one supposes, is that there’s no greater proof of a mother’s love than her saving her child from a malevolent supernatural force. The film’s storylines fail to inform or intensify each other in any theme-deepening or character-developing ways. Script issues aside, this film is a case of having a director skilled enough to manipulate dream imagery to craft fear that lasts longer than your typical jump scare. Director James and the special effects department do a bang-up job on a limited budget to wring as many scares out of this malevolent presence as possible. Even though the film’s color scheme is a dreary, dusty, and uninteresting gray, James and company manage to keep the scares and visual surprises coming. This witch stretches to impossible lengths, her blackened arms reaching toward Chloe and Jess like a pair of wretched tree branches. Mangled hands crawl out of sinks that run red with blood, inching closer and closer to their prey, these two women whose issues can hardly address their issues while running from this metaphysical doom. Doors are a prevalent symbol in this film, as they remain illuminated while surrounded by darkness, which builds anticipation as it indicates the demon is lurking within such evil territory. There are also more subtle symbols which allow viewers to appreciate the bigger picture, if only they are paying close enough attention; as red is often depicted to denote the persevering evil force, and the use of mirrors to reflect a character’s demons within. The performances are quite alright. Katee Sackhoff is a recognizable name in the TV world (Battlestar Galactica, Longmire). She knows how to play a badass female character. That’s why I enjoyed seeing her doing something different in this film. She is still not a woman you would want to mess with but the setting feels more down-to-earth with a good dose of paranormal thrown in. Despite the limitations of the script, she is quite stellar. Sing Street‘s break out star Lucy Boynton suffers mainly as she given nothing to do other than play a general terrified teen. In smaller roles, Pooneh Hajimohammadi, Jordan Bolger, Nick Moran & Richard Mylan are alright. On the whole, ‘Don’t Knock Twice’ is a mildly entertaining film led down by its own odds of unoriginal storytelling ambitions.