A feature in film-streaming services that often goes underrated is the ability to play a trailer for something before watching it. For better or worse, a film trailer might be the only thing you need to make you go from ‘uninterested’ to ‘interested enough to watch.’ That was pretty much how, during a desperate search for some good horror that I hadn’t seen before, I came to view the trailer for They Come Knocking on Hulu, for better or for worse.

Pros

Acting is pretty good from the adults
Weird vampire children are effectively creepy for a little while

Cons

Plot around the creepy children and what’s really happening doesn’t make sense
Ending just happens without much explanation
Has opportunities to go a darker route and plays it safe instead
Predictable story beats and uninspired characters
Cheap jump scares
Really drags out particular scenes with jump cuts and staggered editing

Plot & Thoughts

Nathan (Clayne Crawford) has brought his two daughters, Clair (Josephine Langford) and Maggie (Lia McHugh), on a road trip as a way of saying goodbye and laying to rest the memory of their mother, Val (Robyn Lively). Clair holds a grudge against her father for reasons that are disclosed later on—reasons that are also very predictable—and she plays the role of an angsty teenager. Maggie, being the younger daughter whose body is not exploding with hormones, does not hold the same animosity towards Nathan and mostly gets along. Having just watched The Possession a week prior, this whole dynamic between the single dad and his slightly estranged daughters felt very familiar and stale.

While out on their road trip, they park their camper in a secluded area in the desert to talk about their memories of Val, and to bond. The first night they’re there, however, a group of creepy children shows up at their door, demanding that they be let in. The children are all wearing hoodies, all have black eyes like those of a demon, and all very obviously have malicious intent. The next morning, the truck’s engine is destroyed and Nathan has to figure out how to get out of there while the demon kids are on the loose.

When I decided to watch They Come Knocking, I thought it was a movie part of a film series that Hulu was doing. I didn’t realize that it was considered an episode of a show, similar to that of Black Mirror, The Twilight Zone, or other anthology series. Had I known, I might have been more forgiving in my experience with it, or I might not have watched it at all. Nonetheless, if this ‘episode’ is any indication of the quality of the Into The Dark series it’s a part of, I think I’ll pass on the rest.

There is nothing that this movie is doing that I haven’t already seen dozens of times before. It is as predictable and cliché as it gets. The only thing I didn’t see coming was how abrupt the ending would be. Everything is quickly resolved without any explanation as to who the creepy kids are, why the kids were haunting this particular stretch of desert, or why a particular action a character performs resolves anything. Knowing that it’s part of a show, the abrupt ending makes more sense because anthology shows often have a strict time limit on an episode and there’s no way to answer all the questions in a short amount of time. However, They Come Knocking is filled with scenes that are purposefully drawn out to create tension, which should have been shortened to give the movie more time to explain itself. Even if it did explain itself, however, I doubt the movie would be much better.

There’s really not much else to say about it other than there are very specific moments in the flashbacks where the acting of Clayne Crawford and Robyn Lively managed to do some good storytelling through subtle acting and body language. Their quality acting might be why there was such a focus on the ‘happy family that has been shattered’ storyline and less on the horror. The problem is that the movie just ends up being two half-baked stories rather than one good one. For the sake of trying to add some drama and character depth, a fair amount of time is spent covering the dynamics of the broken family. The result is a movie that doesn’t do anything new or interesting and comes across as incomplete. It would have been better if they just tried to tell a more unique character drama story, or gone in on the horror a bit more to help the plot make more sense

TL;DR (Conclusion)

They Come Knocking is a dull, uninspired, and incomplete work. Whether you want to call it a film or an episode of a bigger Hulu TV show, it still comes across as a vacuous viewing experience. Despite the commendable efforts of its actors at trying to bring some depth to the story, there’s really not much good or interesting about They Come Knocking.

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