 |
| Poster, as always, (c) Stuart Manning |
"Hope is its own
form of cruelty.”
This review will
contain some spoilers.
Being a student now,
Bill is looking out for student digs. She and a group of mates and mates of
mates trawl through the horrors of off-campus student housing, before being
offered a too-good-to-be-true contract on a giant mansion; limited mod cons,
but plenty of space and just the teensiest hint of a parasitic, alien
infestation that traps the house's residents in the walls themselves.
The Good
The episode is creepy
AF. I watched it in daylight, which is probably a good thing.
None of the students
are utterly annoying.
The caretaker was a
darkly tragic character, especially as the Doctor slowly exposed his true
identity, his deception and the depths of his manipulations. That he was played
by the excellent David Suchet was a bonus.
The Bad
The Doctor's
inability to recognise human age is a joke that is wearing thin.
The Ugly
I'm more or less done
with Doctor Who trying to do romance on any level. I'm not sure it's ever
really done it well; not on telly, anyway. Thankfully it was pretty low level
this time out, but it was still annoying.
Theorising
Well, this was probably
the 'everyone lives' episode for the season, so expect heavy casualties going
forward. The prisoner in the Vault clearly relishes the young in peril, which
would perhaps support the Master/Missy theorem above the also circulating Susan
hypothesis.
Top Quotes
"What’s the point of surviving if you never
see anyone, if you hide yourself away from the world?!" – The Doctor
The Verdict
'Knock, Knock' is a
decent standalone episode elevated by the presence of David Suchet. As usual
for modern Who horror, however, it suffers from the crisp, digital format (in
retrospect, I think that the found footage format worked for 'Sleep No More' in
part because it allowed for a more filtered visual aesthetic,) and from a
little too much showing of the monster. Even if the monster isn't really a
monster, it's always more effective to imply than to show, especially on Who's budget.
Score - 6/10
No comments:
Post a Comment