Natty Knocks (2023)
Rating: **1/2
Starring: Charlotte Fountain-Jardim, Thomas Robie, Noen Perez
On Halloween 1976, B-horror starlet and town tart "Natty Knocks" gets dragged out of her home by a group of religious fanatics who accused her of witchcraft and adultery before being set ablaze inside a gasoline-doused outhouse, all while her young son, Abner, watches in horror.
Cut forward to the present and Natty Knocks is now a small town legend with effigies burned in bonfire parties and little kids warning each other not to answer nine knocks at night or risk being killed by the witch. Caught up in this macabre celebration are two teen friends, Wyatt (Thomas Robie) and Robby (Noen Perez), as they unwillingly become witnesses to what looks like a man abusing and kidnapping a girl inside a house they targeted for a Natty Knocks prank. The two anonymously report the attack but, seeing little to nothing being done about the potential crime in the following day, one of them decided to give the creep a bit of a scare by throwing a baseball at his house, hinting somebody knew what he did.
Little to the teens' realization is that the man's Abner Honeywell, grown-up, still traumatized by his mother's horrific passing and is one of the town's police officers. Using the resources he have at his disposal as a cop, Abner learns the identity of kids who've been causing him a bit of trouble, stalking them from time to time and killing off a few folks who got in the way. All of this while Abner obsessively watches old grindhouse horror flicks his dear late-mum starred in, imagining(?) her spirit commanding him to kill.
Teetering between the line of a young adult horror mystery and a bloody yet cheesy B-grade slasher,
Natty Knocks (2023) appears to have a lot going for in its plot, but only manages to get a few of its introduced ideas to work as it mostly struggles with its direction and tone. There's simply too many convoluted turns but not enough plot pieces to have them work to the film's favor, such as the fact that our killer is squatting inside the foreclosed house of his late-mother all the while still holding a job as a cop, as well as the bits of supernatural at play here which the movie throws in from time to time, but it's barely explained to the point that the film could've gone by well enough without it! In turn, the flow of the film is hindered a lot by its own disjointed plotting, leaving the entirety of the story feeling barely connected as a whole and missing a lot of marks.
For what
Natty Knocks (2023) did right, the main characters are at least likeable enough to follow through their little misadventure of murders and maniacs, with Wyatt, his realtor single mum Diane (scream queen Danielle Harris) and his young sister Jolie (Channah Zeitung of Nickelodeon's
Game Shakers)'s emotional baggage as a broken family adding a bit of sympathetic weight in their depth. The film also boasts other familiar faces from the horror fad, mainly cult icon Bill Moseley playing our Abner with a quiet, subtle yet murderous creepiness may it be as a psycho-killer with mommy issues or as a cop who's doing shady stuff under the table. Robert Englund also shows up in a small role as a higher up working at a realtors office who tells one of the teens the tale behind Natty Knocks' infamy, and does it quite engagingly even if most of it is just him sitting behind a desk. Both Moseley and Englund's characters would soon cross paths and, though brief, the engagement is nothing short of fun.
As a slasher, there's a stronger focus on build-up and mystery so the kills are a little lacking on the bodycount, though a good few of them are at least generously bloody and intense. There's a whole deal of stalking and creeping around instead, which is unsettling enough for most parts especially whenever Moseley plays it unnervingly straight, but the fact that this leads to an unremarkable last act wherein we witness cheesy ghost effects and a climactic brawl that ended way too soon simply ruins the mood. It also doesn't help that the villain got defeated disgustingly easy after all that trouble and the film ends with a sequel tease that overstayed its welcome.
Natty Knocks (2023) has an honest potential to be a good film; it has an engaging casts with additional star power, a modest production quality and a genuinely interesting backstory behind its killer and the legend they're involved with. It just has the unfortunate flaw of having an unnecessarily cluttered story and some mishandled directions but, hey, at least it got the Halloween feel right...-ish.
Bodycount:
1 female set on fire inside an outhouse
1 male ran through the chest with a fire poker
1 male hacked on the chest with an axe
1 male found dead from a throat cut
1 male shot
Total: 5
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