Kids, Don’t Do Drugs

September 8, 2010 by Editor
Filed under Film Reviews

Someone’s Knocking At The Door (2009)

Directed By: Chad Ferrin

Review Written By: Justin Bozung
Mondo Film & Video Guide Editor
IMDb.com Link

I really love this film. My favorite films are works that keep you guessing, providing the viewer poignant character studies, while at the same time inserting elements that can take a very simple story and make it into something unforgettable. This is exactly the essence of Chad Ferrin’s film, Someone’s Knocking At The Door (2009)…

Regardless of how it’s advertised, it’s NOT a horror film, nor is it a “grindhouse” or exploitation film as I’ve seen it mentioned. Ferrin’s film is more of a acid trip psychological study. that teeters into various genres. It’s poor marketing, that mis-labels films like this one, creating a delay, stopping epic work’s of celluloid from being seen by a bigger and rightful audience. And it’s frustrating…

Ferrin’s film is about a group of un-likely friends / over-exposed drug fueled medical students morning the loss of one of their own, who’s been anally raped to death by a 15 inch penis in his dorm room. Sequenced beautifully in flashback, the story is told in surreal segments lost from all reality. We start with the group of friends, pre death, breaking into a medical research archive uncovering the story of an experimental drug, Talban, used in therapy to get into the mind of a husband and wife serial killer combo from the early 70′s, The Hoppers.

The group, minus one, injects the Talban, and it leads each on a surreal psychological who dun it that has the serial killer duo popping up everywhere, nude, killing them off sexually one by one, all while they each try to avoid the police’s involvement in their friend’s murder case. The finale leaves you in a twist that most won’t see coming, but with repeat viewing can be picked up on from the start of the film by noticing hints in the screenplay’s subtleness.

Ferrin’s film is not an original concept, in fact it was beaten to death with, Adrian Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder (1990). Someone’s Knocking At The Door takes the “drugs gone wrong” concept and twists it into something new, edgy and VERY ground-breaking. Ferrin gives us a provocative experiment, that’s haunting and surreal, and it pulls you into the realm of the possible…of sorts. Standout performances here , come via the help of Noah Segan and Ricardo Gray. Segan has been involved in some of the most recent cutting edge cinematic efforts to be released in the last 10 years, and his performance is exciting to watch. Ferrin regular, Ricardo Gray is here as a Farrakhan looking, st…st…studdering nerd speed freak with massive sexual issues, that ends up with a hole punched in his neck the size of Edina, Minnesota. Speed Kills…Slow Down.

What makes Someone’s Knocking At My Door so brilliant is Ferrin’s direction. His camera is very fluid, and as a director he unfolds a simple story into something big, darkly disturbing and grandiose. The film has this atmosphere that puts the viewer alongside the central characters in a similar disjointed mental state that handcuffs, leaving the viewer, preying for an escape route. There is an elimination of all reality here, causing dream-like euphoric confusion that hasn’t been seen since Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm (1979). The sound design of the film is unforgettable, creating soundscapes of feedback, signal noise, static and SMPTE color tones that at times are used for character dialogue, and induce Khz dysfunction in the viewer’s synapse.

Where is the soundtrack for Someone’s Knocking At My Door? It’s a mind fuck, a love-child of late 60′s horn heavy California pop music and late 70′s German Krautrock that really doesn’t belong, but WORKS on every level, it’s so cool, and quite unpredictably effective. I want it.

Someone’s Knocking At My Door is a surreal nightmare that will haunt you after experiencing it for days. It’s a drug fueled death trip of killer 15 inch penis’, intravenous drug chic, nude evil hillbilly serial killers, human head inserted into vagina a go go, and dirty twitching medical students, that you’d never want as your doctor . It’s a major cinematic high, that you won’t want to come down from. Movies are NOT made like this often. Chad Ferrin is the future.

Justin Bozung is the Editor for the Mondo Film & Video Guide. Currently he also writes for such print magazines as College News and Whoa. You can email him directly at justinb@mondo-video.com