Review of Don't Knock Twice (2017) by Brandon T — 26 Mar 2017

On the surface, one could be forgiven for thinking DON'T KNOCK TWICE was just a standard, dreary, cheap horror flick. Actually watching it, however, reveals it to be far more interesting than your usual modern scare fare.

At its heart, the movie is a very effective character piece about two damaged women - a mother and her estranged daughter - who become entangled in a paranormal mystery; along with that, we get some classic "ghost story"-type tropes (but done right): a desolate, lonely British manor, strange noises and apparitions in the night, paranormal goings on as a metaphor for some personal trial, and sinister backstories to be discovered.

Along with those, we get a couple of fantastic jump scares (which managed to work even on someone like me, who tends to know the rhythms of how such things are constructed) and some very evocative and spooky imagery.

The central character drama is in the vein of things we've seen often in the genre, but it's executed very well and has some legitimate emotional potency. Sackhoff and Boynton are both excellent as our mother/daughter tandem; Sackhoff hits some quite raw places as a woman trying to reconnect, while Boynton perfectly balances resentment towards her mother and increasing desperation as her supernatural predicament.

As the film moves into its third act, it looses some steam as it becomes preoccupied with solving the mystery behind the ghostly occurrences, some (well, a lot) of the exposition is delivered in clunky ways, and the ending itself is a bit anticlimactic.

But for the most part, DON'T KNOCK TWICE is a pleasantly old school yarn of the sort that we don't get too often.