Knock Knock 2

Some overall spoilers in the way of premise, depending on how strict you are, but nothing remotely specific.

For the second time I've found a decent found footage film On Demand (the first being Home Movie). The fun thing about this one is I didn't know a lick about it, had never heard of it before. So I didn't know if the 'enemy' would be a serial killer, ghosts, monsters, aliens... I was hoping it'd be aliens... even if that was by far the least likely of the choices, and there's actually a wealthy variety of alien found footage (in fact you see alien found footage much more often than 'regular style' alien horror movies). Turned out this time it was ghosts. Not my #1 favorite of possible premises, but one that found footage does very well, and one that lends itself more convincingly than most other stories in low budget FF films.

This is basically your run of the mill low-budget found footage film, which is good because I usually like low budget found footage films much more than the major studio ones. Not a hipster thing, it's just that the low budget ones tend to be more realistic and more effective as found footage. The high budget ones often (though not always, of course) use inexplicable multiple camera angles which render the found footage format as essentially a gimmick, and they craft complex storylines which stretch credulity too far from what works on found footage's primal, innate sensibility. Found footage is a simple format, and having a low budget often leads filmmakers to err on the side of simplicity, which makes the end result better.

Knock Knock 2 is by no stretch a great film, but it's competent. On the scale, it's not as good as The Wicksboro Incident, but much better than Strawberry Estates and Eyes In the Dark. Worthy of a nice nighttime watch for fans of found footage. Thankfully it's not just your average haunted house film, which has been done to death and done to perfection, from Ghostwatch to Paranormal Activity and the multitude of clones in its wake. Although it does get stuck in some familiar territory near the end, the good ole' trapped in a haunted location bit (Grave Encounters, Strawberry Estates).

The first hour of the film is excellent. The initial premise was very cool and uncommon. Instead of just visiting one urban legend, on Devil's Night (the night before Halloween), a group of friends is touring Hollywood's various haunted locations. It was so fluid that I wouldn't be especially surprised if they were just creepy on creepy-looking locales without actually having permission.

When they get to the last location, they decide to take a closer look. The location was very creepy, and for a while this was a good setup. Similar to the exceptional use of shade in Wicksboro Incident, the myriad of lights (jittery flashlights clashing against the light of the camera), made shadows dance all around my dark room, which was genuinely unnerving, and uniquely interactive.

Unfortunately the movie starts to wind down right at the moment when it should be picking up. The final scares aren't very scary and it starts to get boring at the end. But for the excellent portions before it, I was still glad I watched it. Certainly not a film that is going to convince non-fans to love found footage, but for genre fans you'd do well to go for this before resorting to what The Asylum puts out.

For the record, the original Knock Knock doesn't seem to have the slightest thing in common with Knock Knock 2. It wasn't written or created by the same people, it's about a serial killer instead of ghosts, and it's not found footage!