Don't Knock Twice (2016) Horror Demon

Don't Knock Twice (2016) - Oh what a twisty tale we tell of the supernatural work interacting with the real world.  Jess (Katee Sackoff) is an artist who in the past did not take care of Chloe. She was a addicted artist who was not keeping her life together. Chloe (Lucy Boynton) is now a teen / young adult who is not so sure she wants to come home and have a relationship. There is a lot of interpersonal development in the first forty five minutes of this film. We learn about Jess and her early life as a partying artist, her rough relationship with her husband Ben (Richard Mylan) a banker who spends way too much time away from home. Now that Jess who has become a successful artist wants to bring Chloe back home and get to know her again.  We see her working and she seems to be a good artist. Jess receives an eye amulet from a model Tira (Pooneh Majimohammadi) who is posing for her.  Seems like it is given to protect her so I guessed it was going to come into play later.  We explore every detail of Chloe and Jess's relationship through out the film in reams of exposition that eventually gets us to the two caring about each other?  will the mother who abandoned her daughter be able to save her from the witch who knocks twice.
  Now how Chloe gets back to Jess is where we get some of the story that is supernatural. She and her friend Danny talk about a local witch who steals children. You can go to her house and knock on the door twice and the witch will come and get you. It will knock on your door twice before it takes you.    Unexplained is why Chloe on the dare knocks on that door of that witch even though she knows about a disappearance. Danny her boyfriend does it also and then gives her a good scare.   We see the witch in action because Danny was the first to knock on screen.  Drifting rotating camera as we move to Danny's apartment. He is woken from sleep frightened. Two knocks at his door, he goes slowly to the door and looks through the peephole at an empty hall then the lights go out. The far end the light goes on and there is a female shape "Danny" She is coming for him. He is afraid but lights and then a call on his computer its Chloe. When she steps away from the computer he is raised in the air by a mysterious force. Hurt and dragged through the open door behind him. She returns and he is not there, but a flash of some kind of gruesome face scares her before it too disappears.
She now can't get in touch with him.
  After establishing that the supernatural is real we eventually get to the story behind it. Chloe finds a myth Baba Yaga to explain what is going on.  "Evil hag, Dark Mother, she is the most evil kind of demon. she opens a doorway between hell and the world of men so she can devour the innocent. The demon's power are limited so she needs the help of a human slave or a cursed soul to do her bidding here on earth. you can tell who the human slave is because the demon marks them." (Just so happens to be the pendent Jess is wearing.) When you knock the 1st knock raises the demon the second summons the human slave. And the only way the human slave can be free of the demon is if they kill themselves, or if they trick someone else into replacing them by forcing them to do something truly evil. Tira, who gave her the amulet meets Chloe and is immediately anxious  and wants to leave.  "Be Careful Jess. You can't help her. She belongs to someone else, there is a darkness around her. Trust me Jess I know about these things. She's marked by something terrible."  Again the exposition to get to this place is really long and a bit tedious.
  Danny is missing so detective Boardman (Nick Moran) comes around to see if Chloe is okay.  Danny and Chloe were at the children's home with another boy Michael Flowers who went missing. They got it into there then 9 yr old heads that it was the red headed old lady Mary Aminov and went to her house night after night knocking on her door. The old lady couldn't take it anymore and killed herself. He does not believe it and thinks Danny and Chloe had something to do with that. Now he does not believe her about Danny.  The way he interacts with the women it sheds doubt on the sanity of Chloe making it harder for Jess to buy into the supernatural aspects of her story.
The detective is outside staring at the old house by the highway where Mary once lived so it the slave the detective or Jess. Jess could be the red herring in this one. They back this red herring up with scenes that make Jess doubt Chloe and her story before the two women start having shared eerie experiences. This certainly changes the tone of the film.
 Scary scene where lights go out, Jess outside at the time and Chloe is alone in the house. after locking the door behind her she finds it open but when she goes to enter some force pushes the door against her. Chloe looking around the house while Jess with a large knife is stalking the house for strangers. "Run" Chloe hears the whisper. Mary passes in the background. Neither Mom or daughter hear each other. Lights on and off let us know ghosts are about. Hiding in the bedroom the demon leaves the clothes cabinet to get Chloe. Jess saves her at the last minute pushing through the door. Lights suddenly On. Jess says there is no one in there. They take all the doors out of the house and burn them which seem a reasonable response to an actual haunting where the being knocks on the door.
As the supernatural events expand and the women share them they go to Tira for help about it and she suggests  Mary was accused of a crime she did not commit, and was driven to suicide. Chloe helped spread that lie and now Mary wants revenge. Clear Mary's name and the curse may end. Chloe runs from this encounter. Jess calls the cop for info, With Mother's intuition to guide her she seeks the truth. At her studio she finds a box inside is Michael Flowers posters a profile of Mary and the interrogation of Mary on a memory stick. The cop is being super hard on her accusing her of the disappearance. So is he the bad guy?
  The film is a bit of a twisty twist and so not to give away the ending we should stop talking about the rest of the plot in detail. The women seek a way to save Chloe from the demon but there is a big and strange climax that leaves the viewer scratching his head. When all is said and done we have a resolution but it is not what the film seemed to be moving towards. Now I would normally really like that but in this case it was so exposition heavy to get to that point that I don't think it worked as well for me as it should. The ending which leaves more questions than answers was not as satisfying as I wished.  Then there were the weird things like Jess oddly appearing before the board of people at the group home to discuss what happens next as far as her daughter staying with her. The odds were already against that but the interpersonal dynamics are driven repeatedly home by Writers Mark Huckerby and Nick Ostler. Director Caradog W. James does a decent job with a complicated script. He manages the shot well and the scares have some tension in them.  I wish I liked the film more but it is not bad. More it is one of those films that just hits on some cylinders but not all.

Oculus (2014) Horror Supernatural

Oculus (2014) - SERIOUS SPOILERS IN THIS ENTRY! At twelve dollar a film I am often disappointed when I go to the theater. It could be picking the wrong films plays a part or it could be that most films are just mediocre. Most times though there sitting in the dark there is a sinking feeling that the film on the screen will be in a discount bin or queue in six months. It may be that theaters are so oriented towards big budget films that we just don't see the creative independent films that blow our minds. Small venue viewing like the ones held at the Somerville Theater by All things Horror tend to be where I am seeing the cool stuff. The full priced theater tends to just leave me a bit empty an so it is always with reluctance that this is where I want to see a movie. An exception had to be made this week for Oculus by Mike Flanagan. ( I probably should have gone to see the Conjuring in theaters but never did. So with a bit of hope that my pattern would be broken my daughter and I ponied up our cache and headed in to see Oculus.
Flanagan got a recommendation from this blog for his cool monster flick Absentia (2011) so I was really looking forward to see what he could do with a bigger budget. I thought at that time that this was a very creative film maker with potential and really the criticism I had for that first film was he just did not have the funds to make it as good as it could have been. This is not a problem with Oculus. I wanted to also see and write about this film before I started hearing and seeing reviews for it. I am sure I will probably pick up on many of the same things any reviewers will but I wanted to do this review clean before getting any ideas from anywhere else.
  Oculus is a very cleverly written film and the editing is even more clever. Shifting between the past and the present in such a fluid way it tells two tales at once centering around an antique mirror. Whether that mirror is haunted or not I will leave for later, the characters think it is and that is what matters for the plot. The film tells the story of sibling Kaylie and Tim Russell in the past and in the present. In the past we see the 12 year old Kaylie (Annalise Basso) and 10 year old Tim (Garrett Ryan) as they move into a new house with their parents Marie (Katee Sackoff) and Alan (Rory Cochrane). Then things go horrible wrong in the house and Alan kills Marie and when going after the kids is killed by young Tim.
  In the present Tim (Brenton Thwaites) is released from mental health treatment at the age of 21 and is met by his sister Kaylie (Karen Gillan). She over the years in foster care has grown into an obsessed young woman. Obsessed with the mirror she believes is the root of the past horrors. Having hunted it down and researched its history she is convinced it feeds on life. Killing plants around it, making pets vanish, and taking over the will of people around it to kill those they love. She has a plan to document and then destroy the mirror. Her brother having recognized through therapy all the ways the past could be misremembered is reluctant to help but family bonds are strong and soon the two are back in the house their parents died in and are playing out a plan.
  The writing in this film is very smart and I appreciated it. The scenes in the past are viewed from the point of view of the children. Traumatized by arguing parents who grow increasingly more dysfunctional we get to feel their pain as thing spiral out of control. Kaylie the older of the two sees a supernatural entity in the mirror in the fathers office and feels it is influencing him towards violence. Really the clever part is whether there is or isn't anything other than fucked up parents and psychologically damaged children. Sure we see the other worldly beings as the audience but it is completely through the memories of the siblings. Having worked in mental health for many years it seems possible that it is Kaylie who is misremembering the past and that the trauma of the murders has created a psychotic break for her. This would explain her needs to deal with the mirror. Tim is a voice of reason trying to explain how things could have gotten confused but she is so determined that he seems to lose this argument. She is convince that therapy has brainwashed him into explaining all the magic away from what happened. He being influenced by her in the past easily falls under her spell again in adulthood. Playing with the line between real and unreal is such a strength of this film. The absolutely complicated system that Kaylie comes up with to fool the mirror and hopefully destroy it could be viewed as a bit crazy but she is so convincing in her evidence that we and the brother must at least hope for her sake that it has credence.
  If there is a weakness in the film it is the blatant setup for a sequel but considering how well done this film is I can only hope that the studio throws a bunch more money at Flanagan and he gets to do even more good work. This film is very much recommended by this blog. Go see it in theaters and hope for more.