Knock Knock — Who’s There? Absolutely No One You Care About
If you’ve ever wished The Babadook had been written by someone who fell asleep halfway through The Conjuring and woke up during a bad episode of EastEnders, congratulations — Don’t Knock Twice is your new favorite disaster. Directed by Caradog W. James, this 2016 supernatural horror film has all the makings of a decent spook-fest: moody lighting, a Slavic demon, and Katee Sackhoff doing her best “guilty mom with a tragic past” face. Unfortunately, it also has a script so confused that even Baba Yaga herself would need GPS to find the plot.
Let’s get this out of the way: this is a movie about knocking. That’s right — the entire premise revolves around people knocking twice on a random door, because apparently, one knock just isn’t cinematic enough.
Plot: Baba Yaga and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Script
The film opens with two teens — Chloe (Lucy Boynton, who seems to have realized halfway through she should’ve taken Bohemian Rhapsody sooner) and her friend Danny — sneaking up to a creepy old house to “knock twice.” Legend says that if you knock twice, a witch will come and get you. Legend should’ve also said, “If you keep watching, your IQ will drop two points per scene.”
Sure enough, Danny gets yoinked by something unseen, and Chloe starts seeing shadowy figures and hearing knocks at inappropriate times (no, not that kind). Desperate and suddenly remembering she has a mother, she goes crawling back to Jess (Katee Sackhoff), a sculptor and recovering drug addict trying to reconnect with her estranged daughter. It’s a heartfelt setup, but the emotional core has all the depth of a Hallmark card written by a demon.
Soon, spooky stuff happens — teeth in soup, whispers in the dark, jump scares every 90 seconds. Chloe is haunted, Jess is confused, and the audience is Googling “how to make cursed doors more interesting.” Every time the film threatens to get creepy, it immediately undercuts itself with nonsensical twists and dialogue that sounds like it was translated from English to Welsh to Slavic folklore and back again using Google Translate.
The Witch That Wasn’t
The titular witch, Mary Aminov, is revealed not to have been a witch at all, which might’ve been a clever twist if it didn’t feel like the screenwriters were just guessing. Instead, she’s a wronged old woman who killed herself and got turned into a ghostly urban legend. But wait — then there’s Baba Yaga, a separate demonic entity from Russian folklore. The film never quite decides if they’re the same being, roommates, or just sharing custody of the script.
At one point, someone solemnly declares, “It’s not Mary — it’s Baba Yaga!” as if the audience should gasp and say, “Oh, that Baba Yaga!” instead of, “Wait, why is a Russian forest hag haunting suburban Wales?” It’s like the movie used “witch from anywhere vaguely Eastern European” as a narrative shrug.
By the time the story gets around to explaining the curse — which involves child disappearances, ritual marks, and someone being “chosen” as a vessel — the film has folded in on itself like origami made of clichés.
Characters You’ll Forget Before the Credits Roll
Katee Sackhoff is doing her best here. Really. She’s giving haunted mom, emotional turmoil, mild alcoholism, and unwashed hair — all the standard traits of a modern horror protagonist. You can practically see her mentally calculating her mortgage payments between takes. Jess is supposed to be our emotional anchor, but she spends most of the movie staring at sculptures and whispering her lines like she’s afraid Baba Yaga will judge her acting.
Lucy Boynton, meanwhile, plays Chloe with the emotional range of a mid-tier TikTok influencer. She alternates between screaming, pouting, and running up the stairs — you know, all the things your average cursed teenager does when confronted with supernatural evil and mommy issues.
Then there’s Tira, a random side character who exists solely to dump exposition and look vaguely mysterious. She’s the kind of person who walks into a scene, says something like “The witch is not what she seems,” and disappears without paying her half of the rent.
Finally, we have Detective Boardman (Nick Moran), who’s supposed to be the voice of reason but instead functions as the film’s designated red herring. By the end, the movie forgets what to do with him and just throws him to the demon like a human plot device.
Scares So Soft They Should Come with a Blanket
There are jump scares in Don’t Knock Twice, but calling them “scares” is generous. They’re more like loud noises paired with the occasional shadow figure who looks like they wandered off the set of a Tool music video. The film leans heavily on creaky doors, whispering voices, and that classic “is something behind me?” mirror trick — all of which stopped being scary sometime around The Sixth Sense.
And then there’s Baba Yaga herself, played by horror veteran Javier Botet. Normally, Botet’s twisted, elongated physicality can make anything terrifying — but here, he’s wasted. The monster appears so sporadically and under such dim lighting that you could mistake her for a smudged CGI effect or the world’s angriest stick insect.
The cinematography doesn’t help either. Everything is bathed in the kind of blue-gray filter that says, “We couldn’t afford real atmosphere, so we just turned down the saturation.” Every scene looks like it’s been shot inside a freezer full of regret.
A Climax That Collapses Under Its Own Confusion
By the third act, the movie’s running on fumes — and exposition. Jess learns that Mary wasn’t evil, that the detective wasevil (until he isn’t), and that her artsy friend Tira is secretly working for Baba Yaga. Because of course she is.
There’s a portal, a cave, some bad CGI fire, and a heart-to-heart between mother and daughter that’s supposed to be moving but instead feels like an ad for family counseling. The movie tries for tragedy, but it’s more of a mercy killing.
The final twist — Jess becoming the new host for Baba Yaga — lands with a thud. You can almost hear the screenwriters patting themselves on the back for their “clever ending,” while the audience collectively mutters, “Wait, that’s it?” It’s less a shocking finale and more like the film just gave up and said, “Sure, why not possession?”
Performances Lost in the Fog
Every actor in Don’t Knock Twice seems to be fighting their own private battle — not against demons, but against the script. Sackhoff tries to act her way out of a paper bag filled with clichés. Boynton commits fully to being insufferable. And everyone else appears to be counting the minutes until they can knock twice on their trailers and escape.
The dialogue doesn’t help. Gems like “She’s mine!” scrawled on the floor in blood and “You don’t understand, it’s Baba Yaga!” sound like rejected lines from a bad Supernatural episode.
Final Thoughts: The Knock That Echoes Forever (Unfortunately)
Don’t Knock Twice is the cinematic equivalent of knocking on a neighbor’s door for help and realizing you’ve just interrupted them watching The Bye Bye Man. It’s not aggressively terrible, just aggressively mediocre. It takes a solid premise — folklore, mother-daughter drama, creepy house — and drowns it in confusion, clumsy writing, and murky direction.
The film desperately wants to be emotional, scary, and deep, but it ends up being about as haunting as a door-to-door salesman. Every time you think it’s building to something meaningful, it just knocks again, hoping you’re still paying attention. Spoiler: you’re not.
Grade: D (for “Don’t Knock Again, Please”)
Recommended for: anyone who thinks “plot” is optional, people who miss late-night SyFy reruns, and viewers who believe a loud noise equals terror. For everyone else — hang up, walk away, and maybe lock the door while you’re at it.
