Nokturno Review: Boring, Pointless and Half-Baked

When her sister Joanna dies tragically in an alleged suicide, elder sister Jamie comes back to her mysterious home to be with her family. However, she soon realises that her mother’s warnings about the kumakatok, and to not open the door at night after three knocks, might have more realistic and sinister notes to them than she cares to admit. Fighting against beings who threaten to destroy her family, Jamie must do everything in her power to stop the dangerous veiled entities before it’s too late.

The Prime Video film has a runtime of 99 minutes.

Nokturno Review

Prime Video’s Nokturno reminds us of The Ring in more ways than one. We follow headstrong non-believer Jamie, the eldest of three siblings, who is left distraught after her younger sister suddenly dies. Although her mother believes it’s the kumakatok, she is of the opinion that it’s just suicide, as the police said. Unfortunately, as these things always go, it’s not suicide.

Mikhail Red’s film is extremely slow and fraught with jumpscares and cliched horror elements. Although the use of folklore is commendable, it still doesn’t deliver the thrill or the horror much. Most of the runtime moves extremely slowly, focusing on the frayed family relationship instead of successfully scaring us in any way. However, even that feels half-baked and there are no layers to the story. It also doesn’t help that we have seen similar stuff in other films, making the emotional points of this story stale and uninteresting.

It also doesn’t help that Jamie is such an underwritten character that she is a chore to follow. Making the most harrowing and logicless decisions one after another, the film’s focus on her becomes a headache. You wish for her to see things as they are and to at least not open doors at midnight. But alas, she has no fear of criminals who might murder her, let alone ghosts. Thus, you lose sympathy for her quickly as she constantly walks down dark corridors and out of her house without a second thought.

Although there’s an appropriate amount of blood that might catch viewers by surprise, the film doesn’t reinvent any of the tropes that we have come to expect of the horror genre. Some of the scenes involving the kumakatok are quite creepy but the atmosphere leaves much to be desired. As always, it’s constantly raining at night, and while that was fun at some point, it’s an annoying addition nowadays because it is overused so much. The movie could’ve explored the family dynamics more and created a moving narrative in that way but it seems to be happy with unnecessary jumpscares that do nothing but annoy you.

In the end, Nokturno on Prime Video leaves much to be desired because it doesn’t feel like it’s trying to be anything but a mediocre horror fest. The performances are quite good and Nadine Lustre tries to do the most with her character who neither has charm nor sensibility. Jamie is written terribly and till the end her character has little to no arc. The others are also quite good, but again, the characters have little to nothing going for them.

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Final Thoughts

Nokturno is silly, boring and unimpressive. The characters have no arc or nuance and the storyline is flat and boring. There are no scares and the horror elements are stale and repetitive. The movie could’ve done a great job with the concept of the kumakatok, who are quite creepy, but it ends up being neither a terrifying horror film nor a moving family drama. With no twists, one can predict exactly what will happen the moment the film starts and that’s no fun for a horror/thriller.

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