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King Knight Review
Image Credit: XYZ Films
Loading...Directed by: Richard Bates, Jr.
Written by: Richard Bates, Jr.
Starring:
Matthew Gray Gubler – Thorn
Angela Sarafyan – Willow
Andy Milonakis – Percival
Kate Comer – Rowena
Johnny Pemberton – Desmond
Josh Fadem – Neptune
Nelson Franklin – Angus
Emily Chang – Echo
Ronnie Gene Blevins – Grant
Swati Kapila – Alexandra
Shane Brady – Nicholas
AnnaLynne McCord – Karen
Alice Glass – Rock
Barbara Crampton – Ruth
Ray Wise – Merlin
Running Time: 81 minutes
Not Rated
King Knight arrives in select theaters, On Demand and Digital on February 17th.
Witches are a staple of cinema, but usually as the villains. The Wicked Witch of the West, Helena Markos, and the Sanderson Sisters all loom large, but what of your average witch, the modern-day pagan (full disclosure: like yours truly) who has a job and doesn’t know how to summon flying monkeys or haunt filmmakers in the woods of Maryland? Witches may have magical powers on the big screen, but practitioners of the actual faith don’t tend to get their due.
That’s where Richard Bates, Jr. comes in. Bates, known to most audiences as the director of the 2012’s Excision, turns his camera on a Wiccan coven in his latest film. Instead of blood and psychosexual trauma, however, the pagans of King Knight are used as subjects for a quirky, light and occasionally quite endearing comedy about what the journey everyone goes through to discover who they really are.
King Knight centers on Matthew Gray Gubler of Criminal Minds fame as Thorn, the High Priest of a Wiccan coven in California. Thorn seemingly has his life figured out – he is a loving partner to his High Priestess Willow (Angela Sarafyan), and he serves as a counselor and leader to his coven. They come to Thorn and Willow with their relationship issues, and the couples’ home serves as the site for the group’s Beltane celebration. He runs his bird bath business, even if it doesn’t exactly seem to be taking off. Everything seems to be moving along nicely, though there’s still tension in their life over having a child (he wants it, she doesn’t).
Everything is thrown out of whack, however, when Thorn’s past comes back to haunt him. When Willow finds evidence that Thorn used to be the popular kid in high school, she’s horrified that the outsider she fell in love was the Prom King and Class President. When he comes clean and tells her he once played lacrosse, her agonized scream echoes through the hills. Left on his own after his coven abandons him, Thorn finds himself on a path to figure out who he is, which is complicated by his high school reunion.
With King Knight, Baters has leaned away from the horror that has largely defined his film work. Bates has always had a darkly comedic bent to his work, but here he drops the darkness in favor of a more farcical approach. He doesn’t shy away from poking fun as its characters, skewering some of the stereotypical traits of new age pagans. But he also walks the line between the key distinction of “poking fun” and “making fun,” taking a tone reminiscent of What We Do In the Shadows in its grounded absurdity while also treating them as people.
In examining these silly yet heartfelt characters, Bates looks at some deeper themes. On the surface, this is a slight 81 minutes. But scratch a bit deeper and there’s a sweet message about the importance of accepting yourself before you can truly find yourself.
Bates makes the themes go down easier with the comedy beats, including an extended ayahuasca sequence and some wacky first-act moments. When he ventures into sophomoric stuff, he’s on less sure footing and those jokes don’t land nearly as well. However, the humor of the men of the coven leaping dramatically over a candle during Beltane because Willow puts her foot down about them injuring themselves feels both ridiculous and yet, in an odd way, realistic.
Shot on a minimal budget, Bates leans heavily on his cast to elevate the product and they don’t disappoint. Gubler, a regular collaborator with Bates, shines alongside Sarafyan with a strong supporting cast of comedic character actors. They play the material straight, committing to the absurdity with nary a wink to the camera no matter how (intentionally) ludicrous the dialogue is. Their comic timing is pitch-perfect, with supporting turns by the legendary Barbara Crampton and Ray Wise fitting in perfectly.
Toward the end of the film, Bates pivots his movie into a Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion direction. The shift from the coven to a larger group of individuals doesn’t necessarily trip the film up, though some of the awkwardness doesn’t play quite as well in the larger space. But it brings it all back together by the end when its leads throw abandon to the wind and give it their all to bring things to a satisfying conclusion.
