Knuckleball

source: Knuckleball

I watched this without reading any reviews and I was really pleasantly surprised The story was good and so was the acting everything worked really well the only thing stopping me rating it higher was the last few minutes . Definitely one to watch I didn't pick up my phone once !

Okay...weird bonding movie or something? -1 Star for how easily a wild cat was trapped Oh nevermind. It became some some creepy forgotten son against grandkid vengeance movie. -1 Star for the Apparition Giving advice thing, seemed unnecessary +1 Star at least the forgotten son got one victory -1 Star for the Procedural Errors at the End, among other flaws. Okay lets face it, this one was a dud on many levels. Any reviews saying anything other than that are really stretching the truth. 3/10

I thought I would be clever drawing the Home Alone theme but nearly every reviewer has drawn the comparisons. I enjoyed this, simple plot but paced enough to be enjoyable. Young lad left with his grandad, his parents are off to a funeral. Transpires the daughter found her mother had hung herself in the barn due to her husbands affair. The grandad dies in his sleep and the strange neighbour takes an unhealthy interest in the boy. From playing video games in the back of the car he changes into a ninja warrior with SAS skills, barbed wire, petrol bombs. The neighbour turns out to be his step brother and the woman the grandad had an affair with is locked in the basement. Overall excellent cinematography, music score and well acted, enjoyable.

I recommend you avoid reading top reviews as I ended up reading spoilers for the "twist" before even starting the movie. You are better off going in knowing nothing. 7/10 because it's not easy to keep me off the phone during movies, and it definitely did. Also it was nice seeing Munro Chambers all grown up.

KNUCKLEBALL is a film I watched that immediately reminded me of THE SHINING, albeit made on a far lower budget and with a director less skilled than Stanley Kubrick (who am I kidding? I think few are on that kind of level these days). It tells a straightforward and simplistic story about an orphaned kid heading off to stay in the snowy countryside at his grandfather's farm. The good news is that said grandfather is played by none other than the excellent and iconic Michael Ironside, always a pleasure to see on screen. After a while the story develops and becomes a psycho-thriller, with the whole second half of the running time a battle of wits between hero and villain. I made a HOME ALONE connection here and I see I'm not the only one. It's hardly fresh or original, but it's still better than a lot of modern horror fare.

Mother Mary (Kathleen Munroe) and Paul (Chenier Hundal) leave their 12 year old son Henry (Luca Villacis) with Mary's father Jacob (Michael Ironside) so that they can fly out to attend a cousin's funeral. Initially all is well (albeit Henry isn't quite at home with his granddad's quirky ways). However, Jacob's sudden death overnight sets off a chain reaction consisting of Henry being pursued and terrorised and finds himself in a battle of wits to try to thwart his pursuer... As I've stated in my review summary Knuckleball is poor as a thriller, but worse than that are the numerous things with the characters/narrative that just didn't make sense; for a start, Mary mentions that she doesn't like her father's home and that she didn't like going there because she believes that her mother killed herself because her father had an affair. If that's the case then why on earth would you be happy for your child to stay somewhere that you wouldn't want to stay particularly given what had happened to Mary's mother? It seemed very odd to me and it felt like the parent's couldn't wait to leave their son with Jacob and get as far away as possible (which is what they did). The father's general disinterest with his own son's well-being was another puzzling element to the story - I thought at first I missed something and that he was perhaps Henry's stepfather (which would make his passiveness a little easier to believe, but I checked back at the start of the film and he is indeed Henry's dad so why the lackadaisical attitude?). To me this formed part of the problem as the parent's behaviour drew me slightly away from proceedings - the son leaves a voicemail message that they don't listen till until 2 days later? It meant to me that the film lacked any real sense of urgency. Where the film is at its overall weakest however is definitely in the first half of the picture; you can actually fast-forward through the first 30 minutes and you would barely miss a thing. Michael Ironside grunts and mumbles his way through the film (with its poor storyline and low production values it did make me wonder what made him sign up to this project?). His grandson is subjected to labour intensive tasks and throws a baseball at a wall a few times and then Jacob pops his clogs which then just becomes a catalyst for the final sequence of events. The finale sees Henry fighting to survive against his step uncle/uncle Dixon (Munro Chambers) who has murderous intentions on his mind - is he just naturally crazy or is he hacked off that Jacob insisted that Dixon remained his dirty secret? Perhaps it was a bit of both because if he was just hacked off with Jacob then why try and kill Henry? Playing out like a cross between Home Alone and The Shining the battle of wits between Henry and Jacob in the latter stages of the film do give the picture a slight lift, but only on odd occasions. Oh yeah and one other thing that I thought was pretty stupid was when Henry's parents return at the end and they're able to enter a murder scene unchallenged by any police officers? Surely the area would have been cordoned off in the real world?? Had it actually worked as a thriller I could have overlooked many of the puzzling elements involving the story/characters then it would probably would have been something I would recommend in the mould of a 'leave your brain at the door type film.' But the fact that it lacks any significant moments of terror or suspense results in it being a tedious waste of 80 odd minutes. Ending on a positive I did think that Chambers & Villacis were pretty good in their respective roles.

Was looking for a down to earth thriller started to watch and heavily disappointed as it goes worse and worse really bad acting no script and not scary

One of these horror films that if one looks too closely at some of the preposterous plot elements it could be a turn off. Instead, I recommend just going with the flow and getting caught up in the most bizarre , bloody, and outrageous happenings on screen. To me, it had some similar elements to the classic horror tale "The Shining". Director Michael Peterson and writer Kevin Cockle do not shy away from many grim and dark twists and turns Certainly kept me guessing how this would all turn out, and on the whole the movie proved to be a nasty little horror tale.

The kid does a great job! It really is like a scary version of Home Alone. Very enjoyable!