Natty Knocks

I came across this whole looking for a movie to stream. While I am a big fan of Richer Englund bill Moseley and Danielle Harris. I was not a big fan of this movie. But not due to the lack of bad acting or actors or even the cinematography. But they the storyline of the movie itself. The beginning of the movie had nothing to do with the rest of the entire film. The second act of the movie had nothing to do with the end of the film either. And the third act of the movie spouted out a whole bunch of nonsense that made the movie make even less sense than the rest of it. But overall I've seen far worse movies.

I was looking for Halloween-themed horror movies and came across Natty Knocks. I'd seen the cover before, and my curiosity led me to check it out since the plot summary sounded fun. The movie has decent production value and includes some familiar faces in the horror genre, like Bill Moseley, Danielle Harris, and even Robert Englund-though Harris and Englund don't have much screen time. From a technical standpoint, the movie looks pretty good for a low-budget horror flick, although some of the effects look cheap and overall low-quality.

The acting is generally fine but nothing remarkable. Unfortunately, most of the characters are fairly unlikeable, making it hard to root for them. The story isn't particularly special, ending up quite generic and unnecessarily confusing, which doesn't leave much for the movie to offer. There's nothing distinctive or memorable here that enhances the film. The pacing feels a bit messy, and the scares fall flat, making the movie slightly below average and ultimately not really worth checking out. [4.4/10]

After watching 4 or 5 stinkers in a row, this one stood out as actually... good, at least in relative terms. This has a lot going for it in competent direction, good audio/lighting, stable camera, scene framing that made sense, and better than average acting. The story was homage-good, although a little leaky- but actually having one was a nice touch. Besides a few veteran greats in here with Harris, Moseley, and Englund, the young leads were far better than expected. Charlotte as Britt is very charismatic and delivers well. Thomas Robie as Wyatt showed good restraint in places where young actors typically overdo it. The one distraction was the age issue. I was trying to overlook that Wyatt looked basically the same age as Britt, and even Jolie was too old for a high-school sitter and to be crying often. But hey, the skill trade-off was worth overlooking this. This is more of a family-friendly (PG13) homage horror than say, the Hatchet series, but it's still better than quite a few I've seen lately. I recommend it if you try to catch all the new lower/mid budget offerings or indies.

Why spend this kind of money and production only to have the actors act like idiots and do and say unrealistic things. The ONLY character that seems realistic is the KILLER. All the other characters seem like high school theater kids. Although it is somewhat enjoyable to watch them get killed to stop the inanity. The utter narcissism and vapid discussions make you root for killer to take them out. WHY is this babysitter acting like the mother of these kids while the realtor mother is never home but never selling a house. She shouldve been the older sister. This wouldve been better as a black comedy since the stilted cliches dialogue already comes off as un self aware as it is. Babysitter is also moronically acted and her motivations are stupid. This is why People have no faith in Hollywood types. Clearly this was never test screened or it never get released.

It's good to see Halloween 4 director Dwight Little and Halloween 4 actress Danielle Harris working together again here, and with a movie taking place during Halloween, but this movie doesn't come close to that classic. Very confusing and I did not like the ending. The whole witch (at least I guess that's what Natty Knocks is because they never fully explain) made no sense to me. How/why did she become one, and the flashback in the beginning makes me question: since when did they burn women/witches in 1976?? Perhaps in 1676, but definitely not 1976! Then we have plot holes and sudden jumps from one thing to another with filler missing. Toeard the end, I'm pretty sure a character from earlier suddenly shows up where he wasn't even there a moment before. Just very confusing and hard to follow. And I did not like the end.