Crew
Director – Anthony Hickox, Screenplay – Fee Combe, Anthony Hickox & Robin Squire, Story – Fee Combe, Producers – Fee Combe, Pippa Cross & Janette Day, Photography – Daniel Bronks, Music – Guy Farley, Visual Effects – Stefan Drury (Supervisor – Glen Pratt), Special Effects – Johnny Rifique, Nick Smith & Chris Watson, Makeup Effects – Bob Keen, Production Design – Phil Roberson. Production Company – Shecom Productions/Lipsync LLP.
Cast
Natalie Press (Emma Connaught), Matthieu Boujenah (Henri Connaught), Hugh Bonneville (Charles Pollock), Lorcan O’Toole (Andrew), Joan Plowright (Marjorie Blake), Miles Ronayne (Thomas Connaught), Tamsin Egerton (Flora), Nigel Whitmey (Martin)
Plot
Emma Connaught retires from her position as a top Wall Street trader and moves to England. There her husband Henri surprises her, having bought the Parkside Manor estate in the countryside. At the same time, Emma also announces that she is pregnant with her second child. However, as Emma settles into the house, she believes it is haunted by something. Her son Thomas develops an imaginary companion and becomes malicious. Meanwhile, Henri becomes distant and obsessive as his advertising business starts to fail and his finances start to go under. Emma believes that what is in the house is exerting a malevolent presence on them.
Director Anthony Hickox (1958-2023) started out as a horror director in the late 1980s, making efforts like Waxwork (1988), Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1989), Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992), Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992), Warlock: The Armageddon (1993) and Full Eclipse (1993). From the mid-1990s, Hickox pivoted away from the horror films where he had made his name and dabbled in a variety of other genres – fantasy with Prince Valiant (1997), mainly thrillers like Payback (1995), Invasion of Privacy (1996), Contaminated Man (2000), and Jill the Ripper (2000), or action films such as Storm Catcher (1999), Last Run (2001), Federal Protection (2002), Consequence (2003), Blast (2004) and Submerged (2005).
In truth though, Hickox was not that good a director and, while some of these films aimed in different places, he was a director who floated to his maximum level of competence in the era of the cable and video thriller and his best work was back when he was making horror films. His films from Knife Edge onwards and throughout the 2010s up until his death in 2023 became increasingly sporadic.
Knife Edge was Hickox’s venture into making a Ghost Story. There were dozens of low-budgets variants on these made during the 2000s/2010s to the point that the genre started to feel over-burdened and worn out in its rehashing of limited story tropes. The main problem is that Hickox gives us a ghost story set up – but then nothing spooky. In the middle of the film, an anguished Natalie Press cries out “This is tearing us apart” – but nothing has actually happened – a few minor unexplained noises in the night, her son developing an imaginary friend and maybe becoming more aggressive in his play, and her husband having become work-obsessed. The scariest we ever get is Hickox creating lame audio jumps as someone dangles a doll in front of the camera.
Of course, a good part of the reason for the lack of more concrete scares comes with the twist revelation [PLOT SPOILERS] where we learn that there are no ghosts and that what is being put on is an elaborate gaslight scheme in order to drive Natalie Bliss crazy and obtain her inheritance. All of which turns Knife Edge into a Rationalised Fantasy. The twist is not particularly convincing – indeed, the film fails to let you be invested in much of what is going on – and the ending feels a letdown.
Hickox does seem to be making an effort. The film is shot at the Hammerwood Park estate in East Sussex, which gives the locale a spacious elegance. Natalie Press has a sparkling energy that brings much to the centre of the film. She is unfortunately paired with Matthieu Boujenah who kills the other half of what should be a romantic relationship dead. The film does have some bonuses in the supporting categories, including a then largely unknown Hugh Bonneville, later of tv’s Downton Abbey (2010-5) and Paddington (2014) and sequels fame, as a relative and Joan Plowright, the widow of Laurence Olivier and multiple award nominee/winner on stage and screen, in her last film role as the nanny.
Director Anthony Hickox has made a number of other genre films, including the genre homage Waxwork (1988), Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1989), Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992), Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992), Warlock: The Armageddon (1993), the werewolf tv movie Full Eclipse (1993), Prince Valiant (1997) from the comic-strip, the action techno-thriller Storm Catcher (1999), the sadomasochism thriller Jill the Ripper/Jill Rips/Tied (2000), the biowarfare spill thriller Contaminated Man (2000) and the action films Blast! (2004) and Submerged (2005), while he has also produced Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (1995) and Carnival of Souls (1998) and written Prisoners of the Sun (2013).
Trailer here