Don’t Knock Twice (2016)

Directed by: Caradog W. James | 93 minutes | horror | Actors: Katee Sackhoff, Lucy Boynton, Richard Mylan, Nick Moran, Pascale Wilson, Javier Botet, Pooneh Hajimohammadi, Sarah Buckland, Jordan Bolger, Ania Marson, Callum Griffiths, Lee Fenwick, David Broughton-Davies

Don’t Knock Twice. The title says it all. Yet Chloe (Lucy Boynton) and her boyfriend Danny knock on the door of Mary Aminov, an old lady who committed suicide a while ago. Rumor has it that she was a witch. If you knock on her door twice, you will receive a demonic visit, or so the story goes. Danny clatters the door knocker first – always more subdued than an ordinary bell – and is the first to disappear.

Horrified, Chloe seeks protection from her artsy mother Jess (Katee Sackhoff) and her new boyfriend. Jess has recently returned to her daughter’s life after a messy drinking and drug history, and has started proceedings to regain custody. While Jess tries to mend the damaged bond with her daughter – sculpting together works wonders – she is plagued by real-life nightmares. Chloe also has a lustful hallucination. She tries to convince her mother that there is a curse on her after the knocking incident, but Jess doesn’t want that. At least not right away.

“The scariest thing about having a child isn’t the pain or the sleepless nights,” Jess tells Chloe. “It’s love. It is like a big wave that drags you into the sea. Even when I gave you up, I loved you.” It can be wonderful if horror movies have a deeper layer. For example, ‘Babadook’ is actually about grieving and ‘Ginger Snaps’ about budding sexuality. ‘Don’t Knock Twice’ is about a difficult mother/daughter relationship. You have to work out such a theme well, of course, and that’s where director Caradog W. James makes serious mistakes. The scene from which the above quote comes is indeed moving, but there are just as many moments when we don’t feel “the love” for a while. It’s not Sackhoff and Boyton’s fault. They do their best, but they get little to work with.

The screenplay sends the two actresses in all directions. Jess, in particular, reacts wonderfully to the situation, as if she’s in a different movie than the rest of the characters. For example, she first dismisses Chloe’s fear as the delusions of a troubled teenager, only to set all doors on fire one scene later to avert the danger. The horror is also not well portrayed. James gives way too much in the beginning, so that later it is mainly the threatening violins and the faint jump scares that should provide the tension. In the last half hour, the film finally derails, with a sloppy denouement that leaves many loose ends. There seems to be no rooster crowing to the missing Danny. And Jess’s new boyfriend doesn’t get it, either.

The sad thing is that the concept of ‘Don’t Knock Twice’ has a lot of potential. For starters, the film flirts with the Baba Yaga legend and we haven’t seen that much before. The witch’s design, with its freaky, disproportionate proportions, is also perfectly fine. Still, it never really gets scary. James lacks the finesse to put his ideas straight and clear and opts for big-steps-fast-home especially in the last half hour. Sin!