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I’m sure there are tons of reviews of this movie featuring “clever” plays on knock knock jokes… but then again maybe not. The amount of people who successfully made it through this movie can probably be counted on one hand. The film is basically a throwback to the abysmal slasher movies of the ‘80s… not the good ones, but the terrible formulaic ones that brought about the bane of the slasher fan’s existence… those fucking god-awful Scream movies.

The films setup is about as generic and overdone as they come. Kids are getting killed, a la A Nightmare on Elm Street. Turns out the parents of these kids played a joke on some dude back in the day that horribly burned him and landed him in a mental institution. After somehow escaping and faking his own death, the guy comes back to the small town with sporting a terrible mask that is clearly a combination Michael Myers/Leatherface ripoff. He proceeds to butcher random kids and places them in their parents places of business… because he was burned in his parents’ place of business. A tough cop and a sexy female detective, who likes to show up to crime scenes in a see-through top, must find out why the kids are being killed and figure out how to stop this madman… which of course leads to a finale that is ripped straight from the end of Halloween. Homage or lack of originality? I’m going with the latter.

The film is directed by some chucklehead named Joseph Ariola (insert nipple joke here). Ariola is unfit to be at the helm of one of those steering wheels that you see retarded kids spinning on playground equipment, let alone a slasher flick. The film’s inability to flesh out the characters and victims makes the film play out like a smorgasbord of unconnected kills. I have no idea who was getting killed, what their names were, or how they fit into the stories thanks to Ariola’s cut and paste directorial style. Each scene is so disconnected from the preceding one that I felt like I was watching a bunch of short films. Ariola compounds the shittiness of the film by trying to spice things up with some hack editing tricks, including flickering imagery, shaky camerawork, and a lingering eye for gore. The story is told in a haphazard manner that ruins any momentum the film could ever hope to create. Characters appear out of nowhere and disappear altogether, creating a blur of generic victims.

The acting in the film is terrible… I wish I could remember the characters’ names so I could bag on them, but the finer points of the film are as elusive as pig covered in grease thanks to the director’s shit storytelling talents. The only exception in the film was the old dude that played Grandpa Detective (made up name). He wasn’t even that great, just the least terrible of the bunch, as he saunters through the film spouting terrible wannabe hard-boiled dialogue in a New York accent.

The best thing about the film is the gore. There are actually some pretty sweet special effects in the film, when they’re not being chopped up and butchered to shit by Ariola’s maddening spastic visual style. The kills are frequent, bloody, and well-pulled off, which makes the deficiency’s in other areas all the more distasteful. It sucks when good gore is wasted on crap films.

Knock Knock is an appalling effort, even for a by-the-numbers slasher flick. I love the fact that they try to set up a sequel with the shitty ending of the film, like anyone would ever want to see a sequel to this turd. You never know though… I did watch all the Scarecrow movies.

Final Synopsis: Poop in your hand and shake it around… you’ve just made something akin to Knock Knock! It sucks. Even if you’re a slasher fan, you should avoid this movie.

Points Lost: -1 for bad directing, -1 for weak characters that are indistinguishable, -1 for some timeline problems, -1 for clichéd story, -1 for borrowing elements from good movies, -1 for wasting solid gore, -1 for bad acting, -1 for shitty editing techniques

Lesson Learned: I guess it does take some measure of talent to make a slasher film. Imagine that.

Burning Question: If you were going to be a hack movie critic, what knock knock joke would you come up with for this movie?

Knock Knock
2/10

Tags: 2007, crazy killer, horror, horror movie, indie, joseph ariola, latest movie review, low-budget, recent, shitty movies, slasher