DEATH KNOT (2021)

New streaming on Tubi and available on DVD/Blu-ray from Well Go USA Entertainment!
Directed by Cornelio Sunny.
Written by Ike Klose, Cornelio Sunny.
Starring Djenar Maesa Ayu, Morgan Oey, Widika Darsih Sidmore, Cornelio Sunny

When their estranged mother commits suicide, a brother and sister return to the small village where the grew up to take care of the funeral. Upon arriving, they find out the village had outcasted their mother as a witch and blame her for a series of hanging suicides that have occurred throughout the village. Though they scoff at the notion their mother is anything but a strange person and maybe a bad mother, the siblings find themselves swept up in the hysteria with angry villagers at their door and strange visions haunting their dreams.

Hailing from Indonesia, DEATH KNOT is another curse style film centering on suicide, specifically hanging, which seems to be all the rage in Asian countries, it seems. Reminiscent of the tepid THE FOREST from a few years ago, and scores of other films dealing with the ominous “Suicide Forest” in Japan which has become legendary for a large amount of suicides occurring there. DEATH KNOT has some very ominous scenes, such as the opener where the mother hangs herself and then diabolically looks at the camera. There are numerous scenes such as this throughout the film, where tense lead-ups and strange sounds make for some good moments of suspense.

The film also sports some good acting from it’s cast. The three leads (Djenar Maesa Ayu, Morgan Oey, Widika Darsih Sidmore) are likable as they try to cope with the loss of their mother and deal with the stigma the town has assigned to their family. For the most part, these guys do a good job conveying some high drama, which DEATH KNOT has in abundance. Maybe too much, as this movie could have done with a little more action and a whole lot more scares. For the most part, this feels like a drama with supernatural elements more than a straight forward horror movie. Yes, things do get dire in the last act, but there’s an awful lot of moping around the house before anything truly substantial occurs. Films like last year’s THE MEDIUM do a good job of dealing with loss, shame, tribalism, and roles in small communities in Asia, but the abundance of slow parts are going to be a hard pill to swallow for those used to faster paced films.

The last act does end with quite the whopper of a tragedy and I wish the epic scope would have been more incorporated into the story rather than simply suggested as a final image for the film. I think having the family deal more with the angry town is a much more compelling story than simply dealing with the loss and picking up the pieces after an estranged parent’s death, which has been done to death in both American and international horror films.

DEATH KNOT isn’t going to blow you away, but I do feel there are moments of real terror director/writer Cornelio Sunny achieves. The horrifying sounds and strange images that are played with work well, but the all-too-familiar storyline paired with the extended time spent centering on the malaise of coping with death overpowered these scenes quite a bit.

Check out the trailer here!!