Directed by Frida Kempff 
Written by Emma Broström
Starring Cecilia Milocco, Albin Grenholm, and Ville Virtanen
Runtime: 1 hour and 18 minutes
Language: Swedish
In theaters starting October 8th, on VOD starting October 12th

by Emily Maesar, Staff Writer

There’s something really remarkable when a film holds up to its marketing material. Coming out of the festival circuit that Knocking was traveling on, the poster was one of the most striking things that I had seen in a while. It was the center point of all the conversations surrounding the film by me and my friends who hadn’t been able to see it yet. It’s a very good poster, all things considered. And, all things considered, so is the film. 

Knocking is a slow-burn Swedish thriller about a traumatized woman who hears a knocking above her apartment. Molly (Cecilia Milocco) has just been released from a treatment center, where she’s been since the death of her partner. So, she’s trying to make a new life for herself… except there’s this knocking sound coming from the apartment above hers. As she starts to investigate and try to uncover the source of the noise, it seems like no one believes her. Even when she hears more and more things that lead her to believe that something bad is very much afoot.

I know that a lot of media right now is about trauma, even if it’s not actively saying that on the surface. This is because, in large part, it’s an evergreen topic. Everyone’s got it, and it’s often therapeutic to put very real emotions and events into a genre like this, or even something more fantastical. To explore those dark and sad and often malicious things to their logical conclusion and see how the world plays out.

And I think that Knocking is a really great example of that very instinct. It’s a film about what it feels like to not be believed, especially as a woman. To know that something is wrong and to have every single person in your life dismiss it. It doesn’t matter how many people Molly tells, or how much information she brings as evidence. Nobody believes her. Even without knowing her background, no one is willing to accept that she might be right. 

It’s something that seems like writer Emma Broström’s bread and butter. Because, while it’s director Frida Kempff’s first narrative feature, it’s actually Broström’s second. And her first film, 2015’s Flocking, is about a teenage girl who is raped, but no one in town believes her. While the specifics aren’t the same, the baseline of the two stories is a theme that, like exploring trauma broadly, is evergreen. 

Knocking is a film on the shorter side that truly packs a punch. The cinematography is both gorgeous and narratively imperative, the strapped on lens during certain moments really brings everything home in a great way. Plus, Milocco's performance in the film is astounding. It really holds the film together in interesting and emotionally arresting ways that I can’t wait for everyone to experience.