Hari and his sister return to the village where they were born after the death of their mother, a practitioner of black magic. But the inexplicable suicides of several villagers cause the hostility towards the two to explode.
“Death Knot” begins with a woman saying, “Do not come here,” before hanging herself in a secluded woodland area in Indonesia. Her son Hari (Cornelio Sunny) wakes up from the nightmare, relieved it was only a dream, but the following day, his sister Eka (Widika Sidmore) tells him that she had the same dream. Soon after, they receive a phone call from their uncle, telling them their mother hung herself the night before.
Hari and Eka, along with Eka’s boyfriend, make their way to their mother’s house outside a small village where she lived and discover she was involved in black magic, with some locals claiming she even made a pact with the devil. Trying to decide on whether to sell the house or keep it, they choose to stay a few nights, but when strange occurrences begin to materialize, including locals found hanged nearby, Hari and Eka agree to move out immediately and sell the place but a big storm moves into the area, forcing them to stay longer than they anticipated. As the storm worsens, it awakens the spirits who roam the forest at night, and they must band together to ward off the unholy manifestations, including that of their mother.
“Death Knot” is a slow-burning folk horror that gradually builds up its tension but, unfortunately, goes nowhere. The remote location of their mother’s house is the perfect setting for a ghost story, but director Cornelio Sunny, in his directorial debut, needs to learn a thing or two about pacing as the film plods along, not sure if it wants to be a drama or a horror film. The two siblings talk about past interactions with their estranged mother and the father that abandoned them when they were younger, and much of the runtime is taken up with these dispensable conversations; it’s only when they talk about their mother and her penchant for the supernatural, that the film becomes interesting.
Try as it may, the movie is never scary. A few jump scares harness abrupt piercingly-loud audio, but aside from those few moments, “Death Knot” has nothing substantial to offer. The film also tries to utilize sound effects similar to the eerie death rattle from “The Grudge,” but it amounts to nothing more than another wasted opportunity to do something terrifying. In “The Grudge,” whenever you heard the death rattle, you knew Kayako was about to appear, and something horrible was about to happen; here, it serves absolutely no purpose other than to make you think something is going to transpire. Overall, “Death Knot” could have been frightening, with all the elements in place, but I’ll put it down to director Cornelio Sunny’s inexperience and hope that his next outing will be worth the wait.
Available on Blu-ray™, DVD, & Digital January 17th
