Director – Dwight [H.] Little, Screenplay – Benjamin Olson, Producers – Sandy Little & Jason Richter, Photography – David Dolnik, Music – Misha Segal, Visual Effects – Glasscore Entertainment, Makeup Effects – Abreaction Effects, LLC, Production Design – Cameron Barrett. Production Company – Emerald Fountain/Blessed Films.
Cast
Bill Moseley (Abner Honeywell), Charlotte Fountain-Jardim (Britt Chamberlain), Thomas Robie (Wyatt Henderson), Noen Perez (Robbie de la Marco), Channah Zeitung (Jolie Henderson), Danielle Harris (Diane Henderson), Robert Englund (Mr. Meredith), Amit Sarin (Ajay), Jason James Richter (Leo), Will Murden (Rick), Joey Bothwell (Natty Knocks)
Plot
Halloween nears around the town. After his phone is accidentally broken, Wyatt Henderson tries to find a way to earn money to get it fixed. His friend Robbie suggests a scheme where they steal some copper wire. During the course of doing so, they play a game based on the local legend of Natty Knocks where they go and knock on someone’s door seven times. They enter one such house to witness Abney Honeywell attacking a woman. In trying to do something about what they saw and alert the police, they discover that Abner is a police officer. They also discover that the house is the same one where the real Natty Nocks, a B movie actress who fell on hard times and turned to prostitution, lived before being burned alive by the locals who believed her a witch.
Dwight [H.] Little is a director who comes from a genre background, having first appeared with a couple of horror films – Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) and the slasher movie version of The Phantom of the Opera (1989) starring Robert Englund. Mostly, Little’s directorial career has been an unmemorable one, marked by various action vehicles – Marked for Death (1990), Rapid Fire (1992), thrillers – Murder at 1700 (1997), complete hackwork – Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home (1995), even Christmas tv movie fare – Papa’s Angels (2000), as well as a host of episodes of tv series. He would subsequently return to genre material on a couple of occasions with Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid (2004) and the videogame adaptation Tekken (2010).
With Natty Knocks, Little is clearly taking the opportunity to make a film that pays homage to the horror genre. This is notable when it comes to the casting of a number of actors who have strong genre associations:- Bill Moseley, who played Chop-Top in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) and has had a long genre career since, who plays the disturbed police officer; Robert Englund, Freddy Krueger himself, turns up as the manager of the realty company; Danielle Harris, at one point Laurie Strode’s daughter in Little’s Halloween IV and having made a number of genre appearances as an adult since then, who plays the mother of the kids. The strangest piece of casting is Jason James Richter, once the kid in Free Willy (1993) and sequels, now well into middle-age, who plays the role of the cop, a part that feels as though it should have been mandatory casting for Mark Ruffalo. (Dwight Little previously directed Richter in Free Willy 2 and subsequently married his mother).
The attempts to establish horror pedigree in the casting signals good things about Natty Knocks. However, this is promptly dashed as soon as we get into the film and finds that its focus is on teenagers. In fact, you soon realise that the film’s story – about a witch who maybe haunts an old house and can be summoned when knocking nine times – is really nothing more than a Goosebumps story. The film’s sensibilities are more adult than that but it remains in essence a glorified Goosebumps story.
Horror legends (l to r) Bill Moseley and Robert EnglundThe kids – (l to r) Thomas Robie and Noen Perez – a focus that drags the film down
I am not trying to argue that Natty Knocks could have been a masterpiece but the kid focus does drag it down a level. I mean, there is a key subplot about kids running into a property and stealing several coils of copper wire to sell them so we are not exactly in the territory of earth-shattering dramatics here. Part of it is also that Dwight Little’s dramatics are tedious jumpscares – like the cliché of Bill Moseley’s killer stalking a Halloween haunt and leaving a murdered body behind where it is thought to just be part of the exhibits; or repeated jumps with imprisoned faces loudly slamming up against windows. Or the contrived lameness of a scene where Charlotte Fountain-Jardim goes to get into bed with her boyfriend only to find Bill Moseley is waiting there.
There is also the ending. [PLOT SPOILERS] While the prologue raises the possibility of a witch, the rest of the film shows her as wrongly persecuted and the real threat to be a mundane psychopathic individual (albeit one related to her). However, the last few minutes of the film go off at a left field tangent where we find the townspeople with burning torches were right after all and that Natty Knocks was a witch of some type after all. Her spirit was possessing Bill Moseley and departs as he is killed to then go on and inhabit Charlotte Fountain-Jardim who starts smiling no longer sweetly.
