Thursday 23 March 2017

Don't Knock Twice (in UK cinemas Mar 31) - Movie Review

Out at UK cinemas this month. Katie Sackoff (Oculus, TVs Battlestar Gallactica) plays an American sculptor, Jess, a woman with a very troubled past. 

Having managed to straighten her life out and build a successful career for herself, she is trying to reconcile with her estranged daughter Chloe (Lucy Boynton – TV’s Sense and Sensibility), who’s living at a halfway house for troubled teens.

Initially, she is uninterested in getting to know her mother again, having been abandoned at a very young age by her. But when she and her boyfriend decide to test out whether the local ghostly legends at a supposedly haunted house are true, by knocking on the door, she finds their lives being thrust together.

It seems the old lady who once lived at the abandoned property was believed to be a witch, or something, by the locals and was subsequently hounded to death by the local kids. Local superstition says if you knock on her door twice, she will come for you. So when her boyfriend mysteriously disappears whilst chatting on the webcam, she finds her mother is the only person who she can turn to for help.

Of course, Jess doesn’t believe in any of this superstitious nonsense. But following several unexplained events around the home, she is forced to concede that something is very wrong indeed and supernatural elements may well be at work…

I was a huge fan of Director Caradog James previous film, “The Machine” and so was really looking forward to checking this out. However, I was left feeling slightly underwhelmed as what we have here is essentially a cross between Drag me to Hell and Candyman (or Bloody Mary from Paranormal Activity if you will).

Katie Sackoff is arguably the best thing about it, who as always puts in an excellent performance and there are a few unexpected twists, which even caught me by surprise. But being a militant atheist, struggle to take films about the paranormal seriously and found the plot to be somewhat derivative of other movies of this ilk.

Don’t Knock Twice is released to UK cinemas March 31.

View the trailer on YouTube

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