Knife Edge (2010) - 2.5/4

The second-tier horror auteur who gave us the minor '80s horror classic Waxwork, as well as its sequel and Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat now brings us a supernatural psychological thriller, Knife Edge. I must say, for this kind of film, it's pretty good. It has that convoluted plotting you find in noir, melodrama, and giallo, and frankly it fits well into those genres. As a noir, it resembles Suspicion; as a melodrama, Dragonwyck; as a giallo, Fulci's The Psychic and The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave. It most resembles Evelyn, which isn't high praise, but still praise.

A Wall Street trader who seems to have almost psychic levels of intuition when it comes to trading gives up her high-paying job to move to the English countryside with her new French husband and son from a previous relationship. Turns out she is psychic and she begins getting visions of something awful that happened in her new house, the huge mansion of her husband. Unfortunately her husband can't quite afford the mansion and begins plotting to get her inheritance money. Is she having psychic visions? Is she losing her mind? Is she in danger? How is the house's past connected to her?

There are quite a few characters in this film--from lawyers, to relatives and nannies (Joan Plowright!)--and most of them seem suspicious to us and to each other. You can take guesses and you may end up right, but this is a plot-heavy film that doesn't finish revealing until the very end. It's generous enough not to hit you over the head with some plot points as well, which I found gratifying. While the melodrama was rather dull and difficult to believe--is this Frenchman such a twat he can't just ask his wife to borrow a few bucks for the mortgage?--it's a pretty decent and fun plot if only because it always has so many balls in the air.

I also liked some of the visuals. Hickox uses some digital editing to make fascinating dream sequences with such fantastical imagery as a tree covered in eyes; he also employs a few efficient superimpositions. The rest is competent, with the occasional interesting angle. Hickox has never been weak on visuals.

Knife Edge is an old film made in the present day, a classical psychological horror made with modern style and techniques. In some sense it could have been made in the '80s. It's not a throwback, nor is it particularly innovative; it's just an enjoyable supernatural thriller.