Knocking

Great performance from the lead. I felt her fear and anxiety the entire runtime. My wife and I were both felt so stressed and empathetic to the protagonists suffering.

After sitting with the ending overnight, I also really enjoyed it. It leaves me feeling happy, oddly enough.

Perhaps my favorite horror from Sundance? Censor was good too.

Give it a watch and stress out with our hero!

Knocking, directed by Frida Kempff, is a slow-burning psychological thriller that is equal parts haunting and frustrating. The film follows a woman named Molly who is released from a psychiatric hospital and moves into a new apartment, only to be tormented by a persistent knocking sound that nobody else seems to hear.

The film's cinematography and sound design are excellent, with Kempff using close-ups and atmospheric soundscapes to create an eerie and unsettling atmosphere. The film's lead actress, Cecilia Milocco, also delivers a strong performance, conveying both the vulnerability and the resilience of her character.

However, the film's pacing is a major issue, with the slow-burn approach feeling unnecessarily stretched out and repetitive at times. The film also struggles to balance its psychological and supernatural elements, with the latter feeling tacked on and underdeveloped.

The film's themes of trauma and gaslighting are timely and relevant, but the film's execution falls short of fully exploring them in a meaningful way. The film's ending, while intriguing, is also frustratingly vague and leaves too many unanswered questions.

A psychological thriller that is handled with a certain suspense, although from the visual point of view it does not have bright ideas. The story benefits from an adequate length (short film based on a short story), although it gives the impression that the path takes us not very far from where we were at the beginning. Good performing by Cecilia Milocco, which is above the predictability of the story.

Knocking is about a woman who leaves a psychiatric ward after a nervous breakdown, but she soon begins hearing mysterious knocking sounds in her apartment. Of course, any midnight horror movie is going to catch my attention and this happened to be one of the ones I really wanted to see. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to what I wanted it to be. Knocking follows a typical indie slow-burn about someone who may or may not be crazy. The movie tries to play smart, but we're all immune to any shock factor that comes our way. Everything is something we've seen before, yet I still found the movie entertaining. Cecilia Milocco gives a good performance that drives the whole thing. We know her history in mental health and an event that has scarred her which is fine for character development. My issue is because we know this, the whole time we're thinking she's crazy and hearing this. The end does play around with us leaving an ambiguous answer. For a 78-minute runtime it didn't feel all there, but maybe as a short this would've worked wonders. It's serviceable but nothing too special.

Knackningar (or Knocking for the English title) is a Swedish mystery/thriller. It's also categorized as a horror movie but that is absolutely not the case, not a bad movie but just not a horror. Although the running time is rather short (78 minutes) the story development was slow paced and made the movie seem longer. But the ending made up for that, not bad at all. During the entire movie there is a mysterious vibe that keeps you guessing and interested in the story. Cecilia Milocco was good, very believable in her performance. There's only a handful of actors and they all did good. Overall not a bad movie but with a faster pace it could have been better.