Someone's Knocking at the Door

Director: Chad Ferrin
Year released: 2009

THE CHARGE: Disturbing the peace and refusing the use the damn doorbell.

THE EVIDENCE: If you ever watched a horror movie and thought, “this flick could really benefit from a few guy-on-guy rape scenes”, then have I got the movie for you!

In Someone’s Knocking at the Door, a group of medical students fond of sampling various illegal and sometimes experimental narcotics find themselves terrorized by a psychotic couple who were held for observation at their med school three decades ago, but who disappeared after killing their psychoanalyst. 

However, questions arise due to the impaired mental states of our constantly stoned heroes. Does the psycho couple really exist? Are they even human? And they’re not real, then who’s actually stalking these students?

And why does only one of them get a snazzy red folder?

Realizing the low budget he’s working with, director Chad Ferrin makes up for it with some daring filmmaking choices that held my attention. The entire movie is filmed in a hallucinatory style to match the mental state of the protagonists. It really felt like I was on the same trip that they were on, sharing their confusion. It even got to a point where I actually got nauseous from a couple of scenes of vertigo-inducing camerawork - not in an annoying “Blair Witch” shakycam way, but in the most accurate depiction of head spins I’ve ever seen committed to film.

Some innovative decisions on editing and sound work add to the fun. Thanks to some quick-cut edits, characters sometimes appear, disappear and change within seconds. (Imagine David Lynch directing “Lost Highway” while on crystal meth.) Sometimes characters speak but the words come out muffled and incoherent. At other times, the dialogue is completely replaced by loud electronic squeals. From a technical standpoint, there’s some bold experimental work being done in this flick to keep you off guard and in my opinion, it works.

Now some of you are surely thinking, “That’s all fine and good, but what about the actual horror?” The horror is plentiful and certainly horrific enough. The flick opens with a near explicit man-on-man rape scene (one of three in the movie) in which the victim also has his tongue bitten out. Apart from a brief autopsy scene, the film then settles into storytelling mode for the next 45 minutes as you get to know the characters and their preferred drugs of choice.

Finally, in the last 30 minutes, the blood flows fast and furious in some disturbingly unique ways. One scene in particular features a character’s entire head being swallowed by a woman’s vagina. I’m going to repeat that sentence, so you can be certain you are not misreading it in any way: One scene in particular features a character’s entire head being swallowed by a woman’s vagina. I can confidently guarantee that you’ll never see anything like this in a Friday the 13th movie. And no, you’re not getting a screenshot.

But if you replace the turkey with a woman's crotch, that's the scene. (Thanks, Joey Tribbiani!)

This crazed amalgamation of sex and gore culminates in an ending that actually makes sense but frankly, after 75 minutes of total insanity, it’s a bit of a letdown. Still, Someone’s Knocking at the Door ends up being an original no-holds-barred (or maybe “no-holes-barred”) piece of independent filmmaking that takes the kinds of chances you just don’t see in anything coming out of Hollywood. It’s not for the squeamish or for those who would rather avoid heavy doses of sex mixed in with their gore effects (and vice versa). But for open-minded lovers of independent cinema looking for a challenge, this flick fits the bill.


THE VERDICT: NOT GUILTY due to disturbance of the evidence. And trust me, the evidence couldn’t possibly be any more disturbed.