Despite a constant creepy atmosphere that elevates this film, ‘Don’t Knock Twice’ ultimately fails to deliver with awful dialogue, a unneccesarily confusing and vague story which ultimately ends on a cliffhanger that sours the entire experience.
The story follows the turbulent relationship of Mother Jess (Katee Sackhoff) and teenage daughter Chloe (Lucy Boynton) as Chloe unwittingly summons a demon by knocking twice on a door of a supposed witch. The one plus here is that the film doesn’t mess around with slowly building up the tension, it jumps straight into the creepy atmosphere and within fifteen minutes, the first big horror set piece sets the tone for the rest of the film. It’s creepy, tense and at times downright scary. Unfortunately, the story is one of the worst parts of this film and it quickly erodes from passable to downright terrible in the final half hour.
The acting itself is passable. As you’d expect from a horror there’s a lot of heavy breathing, screaming and fear but beyond that there’s little else that elevates the film. The big draw here is of course the scares and thankfully, ‘Don’t Knock Twice’ actually does a pretty good job of delivering on this front. A great use of lighting, camera angles and sound make the creepy atmosphere sustain throughout the life of this 90 minute horror.
Overall though, ‘Don’t Knock Twice’ fails to deliver a memorable experience despite the good scares. Awful dialogue, poor story writing including massive expository dumps and a hideous cliffhanger at the end combine to really make this a forgettable film. It’s a shame as it has potential and with better editing and a rewritten story, this could have been a very good horror. As it stands, the only thing I can recommend is to those who’ve already watched it, don’t watch twice.
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Verdict - 4/10
4/10