August 11: "Knock Knock"

Promo pic for "Knock Knock" (from BBC One - Doctor Who, Series 10,
Knock Knock) ©BBC

A large, old house, a group of students, a creepy landlord... what could possibly go wrong?

"Knock Knock" is the debut Doctor Who script from noted playwright Mike Bartlett, and it explicitly wants to be a haunted house horror(ish) story.  And so we get many of the clichés present and correct, including a group of young people who can be picked off one by one and a weird old guy (played wonderfully by David Suchet) who knows more than he's letting on.  And, like Doctor Who does, "Knock Knock" puts the Doctor inside the cliché and consequently distorts the story, sending it in a new direction.  That's probably why the story ends the way it does, an example more of "misguided" than "evil" at the heart.

But before we get to that point, the story does need to go through the motions, which is why we get the setup of six young, attractive people, with some romantic possibilities (such as Paul being into Bill (who obviously isn't interested, being into girls and all), while Shireen is into Paul) and a sense of people being happy and having fun -- which obviously won't go well when a haunted, sort of alive house is involved.  (Although while we're here, it's a bit weird how everyone seems to know who the Doctor is, yet Bill has to spend time explaining who he is.²⁷⁶ [Edit: It's because he lectures at their school; it's embarrassing how long it took me to work that out.])  The story doesn't really demand much from the housemates other than to be cheery and then afraid, but to their credit everyone here does really well, even when they don't have a lot to really do -- so, for instance, Felicity is claustrophobic (rather like Charlie from Class) and sells it quite well, even while she demonstrates that it's not any safer outside the house than inside.  But the star of the show is David Suchet, who brings a quiet, matter-of-fact manner to a rather creepy character, which makes him even more creepy as a result.  It's one thing to have a character cackle that you're going to die, and quite another to have a character calmly and cheerfully state it.  I only really know David Suchet as Poirot, and seeing him play such a different character was a bit of a revelation.  The Landlord is quiet, a bit oily, and very self-satisfied, and he's a delight to watch, even as you're rooting against him.  I also really like the way his character almost never tries to hide what's going on, such as when Bill and Shireen find Pavel trapped in the wall.  "Music can be pleasant, but a simple repetition like that [record currently skipping], it's merely a distraction from the inevitable," he comments.  "Hope is its own form of cruelty. ... Oh, look.  He's released.  Mercy at last.  Beautiful, isn't it?  Nature contained.  He's preserved in the walls, in the very fabric of the building forever."  Suchet is so matter-of-fact and pleased as he says this that it's really rather wonderful.

Pavel is trapped in the wall. ("Knock Knock") ©BBC

But here's the thing.  The way the story picks the housemates off one by one is well done.  The discovery that this has been happening for years and years is skillfully done.  The living house thing works well, and the woodlice/Dryad bugs are really creepy -- the initial shot of them pouring out of the doorframe in the kitchen as the Doctor and Harry watch is effectively gross, and the way they can just show up out of nowhere is also suitably unpleasant.  The effects in general, in fact, are really good -- seeing Pavel swallowed up by the wall is nicely nasty, and the makeup on Eliza, as she's essentially made of wood, is top-notch.  This should work.  And yet I just didn't find it that engaging.  Maybe it's because I'm not really into horror movies, so I'm not really the target audience?  I dunno; on paper this sounds great, but while it seems like all the individual parts are good, the sum is somehow less.

Is it the ending?  There is a sense, a little bit, that the story is pulling its punches by having the Landlord not be evil but just trying to desperately keep his mother alive, to the exclusion of all else.  They're doing it for a reason, of course -- this is part of the subversion that the Doctor's presence has on events, after all -- but it does come at the cost of not being quite as visceral.  And that feeling is only compounded by the semi-happy ending, with all six housemates being "restored" by Eliza as she ends things -- nice, yeah, but it does neuter the horror rather.  But is that enough to retroactively lessen the impact of everything up to that point?  It doesn't seem like it should, but maybe.

So in the end it's a bit difficult to judge.  Maybe if I were a bigger fan of the genre this would work better for me (so obviously your mileage may vary), but as is, while it's easy enough to admire the care and skill that's gone into everything here, it just doesn't quite do it for me.  Its heart and its brain are both there, but it's like they don't quite click together.  "Knock Knock" is entertaining enough, but it's not as outstanding as it seems like it should be.







²⁷⁶ This might be because Harry was, in initial drafts, supposed to be related to one-time companion Harry Sullivan, so it could have been him who told the others about the Doctor, rather than Bill.  But when they cut the reference to Sullivan they didn't adjust the rest of the script to match -- in other words, draft artifact.