Knife Edge (2010)

Anthony Hickox, the genius behind Wax Work 1 and 2, Hellraiser 3 (yes, I like that one a lot), Warlock: The Armageddon and the cool werewolf-movie Full Eclipse, is back in the saddle after teaching Dolph Lundgren and Steven Seagal some manners during the last seventeen years! Knife Edge is not the most unique movie in history, but it’s still far above average and is a stylish and fun thriller with a shitload of atmosphere.

Natalie Press plays Emma, a famous and very successful stockbroker that decides to quit her career and live a quite life together with her husband Henri (Matthieu Boujenah) and son from a former marriage, Thomas (Miles Ronayne), on the English countryside. It was Henri who bought house, but something is fucked up with the house… Emma has psychic abilities and starts having visions of murders that happen once in the house. At the same time Henri is loosing all his jobs and bringing his company closer to bankruptcy. He don’t want to ask his wife about money, and gets in deeper shit… Emmas visions is getting stronger, and she realizes that there’s more too what the old newspapers is telling her. More secrets are buried…

Actually, Knife Edge reminds me a lot about Lucio Fulci’s The Psychic, and it even has a scene where Emma finds something hidden behind a wall – but Hickox movie has other twists, which fooled me. I’ve seen it before, but this is such a well made movie, filled wonderful acting and stunning visuals. Natalie Press has the perfect haunted look and the rest of the movie is filled with both veterans like the great Hugh Bonneville and Joan Plowright and Jamie Harris and Lorcan O’Toole.

Knife Edge is very old-fashioned, from the location – a big British mansion with antiques to the direction of Anthony Hickox. You can see that he’s from a different school of scares. There’s a lot of moody shots, really good jump-scares and never to fast or to slow. This is perfection. He also gives us a couple of cool hallucinogenic visions, creepy dolls, some not so graphic bloodshed and fantastic cinematography by Daniel Bronks.

With a feeling of watching a combination between a good old British or Canadian thriller from the seventies and a supernatural Italian Giallo, I can say that this is the most welcome production in a long time, not that it’s original, but the return of Anthony Hickox in the thriller/horror-genre.

Welcome back Tony, give us more please!