A review of "Someone's Knocking at the Door"

Confessions of a Film Junkie: A review of “Someone’s Knocking at the Door”.

By: Brian Cotnoir

     Add this to the list of the Most Unpleasant Films I’ve ever sat through in just one sitting.  The thing that led me to want to watch this film was it boasting on one of its movie posters that it is the: “Most Depraved Film of the 21^st Century”. That’s probably a fair title to give this film. I mean with multiple graphic scenes depicting rape and mutilation it’s impossible to not feel uncomfortable or uneasy while watching this film.          

The film I’m talking about is “Someone’s Knocking at the Door”, and I have to be perfectly honest with everyone: despite the graphicness of this film and all the unpleasant things that happen in the film, I still thought it was a good film.  The film is about a group of Med Students in College—most of them who have some pretty bad drug addictions—and one night one of the students, Ray, is attacked in his dorm after shooting up an unknown narcotic.  Ray is brutally raped to death by an unknown attacker, and now the police are out to find out who killed him.  Ray’s angry and grieving mother suspects it was one Ray’s friends who did it, so the police bring in his friends to question them and see if any of them knew who could have killed Ray.  As it turns out the students broke into a records room on campus and uncovered an experimental drug called “Taldon”.  Ray and most of his friends shot it up in the room and later uncovered a file that the drug was created in 1973 by a former Professor at the college to treat a schizophrenic couple named John & Wilma Hopper.  As the students look more into the file they find out that John & Wilma were both serial rapists and raped all of their victims to death—including the professor who created Taldon—and now some of them believe that the drug may have been what caused John & Wilma to commit their violent sexual crimes.  After find out this fact the med students & friends become fearful that the drug they injected into their bodies may have caused one of them might of unknowingly committed the sexual assault that killed their friend Ray, or maybe John & Wilma (who reportedly escaped after killing the Professor) have come back to finish what they started.               

    Holy shnikes where do I even begin to dissect this film?  I guess I should probably start with the story.  The story is actually quite creative. It’s violent as all hell, but creative.  It’s also mysterious and it’s terrifying. I don’t want to give away too many details or spoilers about this story.  It has an original story, and there is a lot mystery and build-up towards the end and I would hate to give away the ending.  There is a twist ending to it—that is vaguely reminiscent of the ending to “Sucker Punch”—and I didn’t think it was bad, but I can easily understand how some people could call it a copout ending. 

Actor Noah Segan plays Justin in the film

The actors in this film are also gave competent performances.  No one’s really bad, but none of them are really anything special.  Noah Segan is probably the most notable actor in this film, and for those of you who read my review of “Deadgirl”, know that I think he get’s type-casted into playing the role of the film’s “Biggest a$$ hole”, but I was actually surprised that he wasn’t in this film. His character, Justin, is pretty douchy at times, but he’s not the most deplorable character in the film.  Most of the film is told from his perspective, and I actually like how they told his story in the film; it was unique, it was unexpected, and this probably the only time, so far that, I’ve ever liked Noah Segan in a film (by the way did you also know that he was the voice of Henry on the Nickelodeon sketch cartoon show “KaBlam!”?).                          

Well that sure was unpleasant.

I felt that this film was well made even with the excessive violence and told it’s story in a way that was mysterious but comprehendible.  If you’re a sick f*ck like myself and love to torture yourself with movies that have unpleasant imagery and graphic violence then this film is for you, other than that you will not like this film.