Knocking at the door, but it is not clear what these 4 people want, plunged without any logic into a mountain hut far from everything and everyone. The first to see them is a sweet little girl who plays, alone and carefree, in the gigantic greenery that surrounds the area, trying to catch as many grasshoppers as possible to study them in her jar. Then everything changes, her two fathers don’t fully understand the situation, trying to react in the most rational and humane way possible but… the goal of these strangers is far from any expectation of the case.
M. Night Shyamalan has come a long way from his Sixth Senseand decides to make a film this time based on a successful horror novel, The house at the end of the world Of Paul Trembley. It starts from the printed page and develops a reasoning that moves hand in hand with the literary counterpart only up to a certain point, to then completely detach itself from it with the ending. His way of narrating is clear and obvious, and the reasoning behind such a story can only touch the viewers in several different points, with an intimism that never spares anyone.
The whole narrative continues without ever stopping in Knocking at the door, without hesitation or brakes of any kind, choosing to omit many details according to the situation and its surreal being. Faith against rationality, logic against human impetus, violence and death against the truest and most sincere love, the present against the future, a tomorrow that no one really fully understands, also involving the whole audience in room that reflects and remains involved, emotionally speaking, in everything that happens.
Knocking at the doorbut why?
Expected in Italian cinemas for the February 2nd, Knocking at the door it is an extremely particular film and with multiple readings. The action itself at the heart of the film, going beyond the scarier and more tense elements, is quite alienating as a whole, tending to isolate the viewer from everything else. 4 people, 4 strangers crash into the house of a family made up of Andrew (Jonathan Gross), Eric (Ben Aldridge) and the little one Wen (Kristen Cui). Initially we think of the classic break-in with the aim of stealing something from them or hurting them, perhaps inspired by homophobic and violent roots.
Actually the goal of these 4 is to save the world, were sent there by “someone or something they saw” and know their only job is to get the family to sacrifice one of their own to save all of humanity. A sacrifice of love in exchange for the lives of billions of people. Obviously such a story is crazy and surreal from the beginning not only for the characters, but also for the spectators themselves, and the film continues to play on this gigantic doubt from beginning to end.
Leonard (Dave Bautista) Adriane (Nikki Asuka Bird), Sabrina (Abby Quinn) e Redmond (Rupert Grint), however, are extremely convinced of their task and in order to carry it out they would also be willing to go far beyond human logic. Everything escapes logic in reality, weaving a narrative that questions and questions itself in its progress, forcing you to reflect on what is happening, on what these people are saying and on what is happening in the world, just like it also happens to protagonists themselves.
Intimacy and suffocating delicacy
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan (author among other things also of Old which you can easily recover on Amazon) into Knocking at the door she is extremely clear and far more verbose than her own protagonists. In this case speaking in images becomes a constant interaction with the profilm and obsessive attention to the emotionality of each individual character. Throughout the entire film the director stands literally on to all of them, always, with suffocating close-ups and very close together ready to capture any expression of each of them. The focal point of the film is not only the history that strangers tell but the way in which the family itself reacts and the beliefs of these people in achieving their “sacred” goal to the detriment of the rest. All the pain of humanity is enclosed within the walls of this house which soon becomes a box in which to capture something indefinite and at the same time perfectly clear in front of the lens of a movie camera hungry for emotions.
Thus we see shots of all kinds, figurative details that immediately become narrative, and a formal attention that leaves no room for anything other than the worry of the moment. One of the most interesting elements of Knocking at the door is, moreover, the interpretation of Dave Bautista. Here the actor found himself on his hands, perhaps for the first time ever, an extremely central character and complexvery multifaceted from an expressive point of view. Her way of speaking and relating to others is very disorienting in all of the scenes, thanks to her interpretation guided by a broken gaze that manages to perfectly communicate all the sensations of the moment.
Is it really a horror through and through?
The answer to this question is Ni. To define Knocking at the door a horror is quite limiting for all that drags behind scene after scene. Fear is certainly not the main fuel driving the vision, indeed, many of its more violent developments are rather censoreddabbing a lot of blood and horror that could have come out if shot in a more direct way.
What are we left with at the end of the vision? Very, very much in reality, given that the beating heart of the film is not so much the surreal situation and underlying violence, with fear for oneself, as the choice that these people have to do and the hypothetical consequences that at that precise moment may or may not arise from the situation. One of the great merits of M. Night Shyamalan is to be able to build the past and present of these characters without having to exaggerate and still keeping the pace fairly balanced from start to finish. Knowing what they are and have done up to that point helps to understand the pain of the current situation with strangers and the general reflection that will lead to the ending. Not too straightforward a film, really, but a story that tries to embrace the frayed gait of the human being in the maze of lifeoutlining a path that inevitably manages to touch everyone, some more and some less.
