With these indie horror films set during the Autumn or Halloween, the filmmakers often tend to forget that Halloween should be a spice, not the main ingredient. Dwight Little who is mostly famed for delivering “Halloween 4” give us a movie that is in essence a Halloween movie. And it’s a Halloween movie with a pale faced villain. But it’s not a movie with a certain pale faced villain because, you know, copyright and all that. What could have been a great Halloween flavored horror movie is essentially just a chore to sit through.
Sure it strikes all the right chords when applied to the holiday, but the aesthetic has little to no effect on what ultimately unfolds within the narrative. I mean the movie looks great, but nothing about Halloween actually impacts the events we’re witness to.
“Natty Knocks” is a small town thriller introducing babysitter Britt Henderson. On Halloween Eve, Britt and her “kids” have to survive the horror of serial killer Abner Honeywell, who is himself the traumatized son of B-movie horror legend “Natty Knocks.” As Abner begins kidnapping and holding random local girls hostage, Britt and her kids have to figure out a way to stop his crime spree.
“Natty Knocks” pegs itself as a horror folklore tale, but in reality it’s just a small town family melodrama. There’s the whole town hiding secrets shtick, and the shady police force, and dilapidated houses on every corner, et al. It really tries for a “Stranger Things” table setting and quite often just flops. There’s a ton of build up to what we’re promised to be a big explosion of a villain, but in the ninety minute production she only appears in the last ten minutes. Taking up the task as villain is Bill Moseley who can play this kind of role in his sleep. He does a bang up job, as does Robert Englund, and Danielle Harris.
Harris doesn’t have a lot to do in the movie, but in her brief screen time she’s good. That said everything else is glacial in pacing and always postures itself as leading in to something when it doesn’t. There’s the prologue involving the “town whore” who is burnt at the stake as a witch, and then we fast forward to the mid-aughts where we focus on a small family trying to keep itself together after a bad divorce. Girls around town go missing, of course the kids take it upon themselves to investigate where the local police fail, and for some reason a sub-plot about copper wire plays a huge role in the story.
Seriously, the copper wire is more of a presence than the titular Natty Knocks. There’s a lot of riding around in bikes, and mishaps breaking in to dark houses, and it’s all surprisingly flat. Little has a lot of talent as a director, and “Natty Knocks” just packs in some great Halloween flavored hijinks, but as a horror film it fails to meet even the bare minimum in scares, suspense, or likable characters.