The Knock at the Door is a home invasion-style thriller short written and directed by Brian Feeney. We open on Sandy (Maisah Mitchell), who has been left in charge of her friend’s son, Sean (Jonathan D Bergman) when she hears a knock at the door of her storefront from a man (Fred Galyean) asking her to use the phone. She politely declines as she was just about to lock up to take Sean to see a movie but the man seems oddly insistent about getting inside the shop. This plays out about how you might expect but perhaps not to the extent some horror fans might prefer. The short is a little under 4 minutes and the actual invasion comprises about 30 seconds of that.

There is some build up of tension as you wait for this initially ordinary interaction to turn sinister. However, the intruder himself is only creepy in the sense that you wouldn’t expect him to be a threat but you do because you know what to expect from this setup. I can’t really fault The Knock at the Door for not surprising me since it doesn’t really attempt to, I’m not sure what else it’s going for. It looks decent enough, features an original score that does what it can to heighten the drama and that small window where things start to get going got me wondering how far they’re going to go with this but they can only go so far in 30 seconds. The Knock at the Door has some decent pieces but without clear intent, I’m left a bit puzzled at what compelled its creation. I wouldn’t mind seeing this extended to 8 or 10 minutes so that we might get a little bit more character development which would enhance the sense of investment. Either that or I just wanted to see a little more blood. It’s 2019, you can kill the kid.