Don’t Knock Twice (2016) Review

I watched this a couple of weeks ago so it seems right to review it now as the first post of the second year of this blog. It’s a British witchy film starring the wonderful Katee Sackhoff, who I’ve liked since seeing her in Battlestar Galactica and on a non horror related note it amazes me she’s not been cast as a Marvel or DC super hero yet. But never mind that here’s my review of Don’t Knock Twice………

Director: Caradog W. James

Writers: Mark Huckerby, Nick Ostler

Stars: Katee Sackhoff, Lucy Boynton, Javier Botet

Run Time: 93 minutes

 

Chloe was abandoned by her Mother as a child and left in a home, along with her boyfriend Danny they revisit an urban legend that saw them lose a friend years earlier. The legend says if you knock twice on the creepy old house of the witch Mary Aminov you’ll be visited and hunted by the witch and you’ll disappear. In an effort to prove their friend was merely taken and the legend is false they decide to knock twice.

This leads to Danny vanishing and in turn Chloe gets haunted by some kind of demon, in an effort to escape she moves back to in with her Mother who had been trying to reestablish contact with her. However once there strange things start to happen, sculptures start to smash, weird writing appears and the estranged Mother Jess doesn’t believe her daughter.

Jess’s husband leaves on a business trip and as you’d expect once he leaves Jess starts to witness the strange events for herself leading her to believe and in an act of unbelievable convenience Jess’s friend just so happens to know everything there is to know about the supernatural. She tells her the daughter is surrounded by a dark force and seems scared of her.

Jess beings to investigate what’s going on and eventually finds what she needs to do. The question then becomes who took the kids was it the witch or was it the suspiciously helpful police man? When Chloe goes missing it’s up to Jess to save her, if she can!

The Good

• Katee Sackhoff is a really solid actress who I always enjoy seeing.
• The set up of the urban myth is executed really well.
• The mystery of who is responsible kept me guessing and guessing until the very end.
• I think there’s some nice effects in this film, the witchy demon beast is pretty creepy.
• Lucy Boyton although playing the annoying teenager is pretty good, at least this one has something to be annoyed at and isn’t just being a little bitch.

The Bad

• There’s a few pacing issues for me, the build up and first 45 minutes or so it really good then it drops off a bit before a decent final act.
• When they visit the witch/demons lair I thought it was all a bit too much, sure I can understand the point but I wasn’t keen.
• The placement of someone who just so happened to know what was going on stunk of poor writing for me.

This is a pretty good watch despite a few downfalls it’s still got plenty of good things to keep you interested. The whole mystery of who did it along with some nice effects, acting and Katee Sackhoff make this worth anyone’s time. Are there better films? Yeah sure but this is a solid effort. Also for anyone interested this is being made into a creepy VR game as well that looks pretty awesome.

Overall Score – 6/10