Knocking: Art-House Horror Mesmerizes While Paying Homage to Greats of the Genre

By Thom Ernst

Rating: B

Horror films take on various modes and motives, from the amusement park variety of hack-and-saw gore to polite chamber room thrillers where an A-list cast pays homage to a frequently scorned genre.

Then there are the art-house horrors, a different brand of horror relying on audience faith that the film will eventually lead them toward something disturbing. And that’s where Knocking, the feature debut of director Frida Kempff, fits in. Knocking is a configuration of atmosphere and dread, paced at a speed of unflinching stillness.

Adapted from Johan Theorin’s short story, Knocking is less genre-specific than one might expect from Sweden’s leading pulp crime novelist. But Knocking runs deeper than jump scares and body counts. The haunting that surfaces from a horror film like Knocking surges up from the psyche, triggered by suspicions that what is seen and heard by the character—in this case, Molly played by Cecilia Milocco—is not accurate.

Milocco’s performance dedicates a conviction that Molly is sane, whether she is or isn’t. Molly is recovering from a trauma that has left her institutionalized. Kempff slowly reveals the source of Molly’s trauma, but it is not the trauma that is the story.

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

Molly sets to start life anew with a clean bill of mental health, though not entirely clean. Life is a new apartment, new neighbours, and a new affliction, that of a persistent knocking only she hears. Molly grows increasingly agitated and suspicious as the knocking, followed by soft pleas for help, disrupts her sleep and recovery. But with no one fessing up to hearing the knocks, let alone creating them, Molly slowly retreats into abject mania that has her neighbours declaring her unstable.

Kempff angles her camera from perilous heights, peering over cliffs and down from apartment balconies. And as Molly’s decorum collapses, Kempff sends her through a dizzying journey along the apartment hallways as though freefalling to certain death.

Kempff talks about the film’s relationship to marginalized people, not just the underheard voices of women and the LGTBQ community, but that of someone tagged as having mental health issues.

Knocking owes a great deal to Roman Polanskis’ Repulsion, and Milocco owes much of her performance to Catherine Deneuve’s career-making role in the same film. Look, too, to films like Robert Altman’s Images, George Cukor’s Gaslight or Brian G. Hutton’s lesser-known film, Night Watch, starring Elizabeth Taylor.

But unlike those films, Kempff eliminates entangling any perspective other than Molly’s. If Molly is to have a breakdown, then she is the sole witness, and the payoff, if not entirely satisfying, is at least valid. But the joy of Knocking is not in the final reveal but in the tense moments that creep towards an unsettling conclusion.

Knocking. Directed by Frida Kempff. Starring Cecilia Milocco, Albin Grenholm and Ville Virtanen. Available on VOD October 19.