Lado oscuro del deseo

Set on Fathers' Day weekend, successful architect Evan Webber (Keanu Reeves) prepares for a weekend of work while his wife and kids enjoy a weekend at the beach. On his first night home during a rainstorm two young women Bel and Genesis (Ana de Armas and Lorenza Izzo) arrive at his doorstep asking for help. After he allows them in the two seduce Evan resulting in a threeway. After Evan's infidelity, the two reveal their true intentions wreaking havoc on Evan's home and life and subject Evan to increasingly intense psychological and physical tortures which may culminate in his death.

Directed by Eli Roth Knock Knock is an uncredited remake of 1977s Death Game (though the original director and stars are executive producers). Knock Knock hits all the beats from the original while also updating the premise with references to contemporary society and technology. I honestly didn't like Death Game when I saw it because I found the plot repetitive and the characters annoying, but I did give it props for being a well made attempt by an inexperienced director and having a chilling performance from Sondra Locke. Knock Knock is certainly more polished of a product in terms of film making in comparison to its more grind house level predecessor, but while the package has been glossed up the content is considerably lesser this time around.

The opening 40 minutes are easily the best part of Knock Knock as we establish Evan's sexual frustration and hectic family situation that build up to the seduction. It's honestly really well told and is much better here than it was in the original 1977 film where the wife and kids were basically non entities for much of the original film's runtime. The film is also well shot with great looking establishment shots of the house.

Unfortunately beneath the coat of polish that's been applied many elements have been downgraded in terms of quality despite a supposedly more experienced director, Roth, helming the remake of a film that was made by an amateur. Keanu Reeves is a good actor, but only if given the right material. Reeves in Knock Knock does have a fun brief shining moments such as scene midway through the movie where he's trying to rebuke the advances of the seducers, but it feels like the role was written with someone like Nicolas Cage in mind and they just shoehorned Reeves into the role because they couldn't get him. Reeves still sporting his John Wick doo just doesn't sell it as a workaday family man and doesn't sell a role that he just doesn't fit into.

Ana de Armas and Lorenza Izzo start off well enough as the seducers when they first arrive in the movie, but around the halfway point where they reveal their true intentions they become absolutely insufferable to listen to. Not only do they act like oversexed brats with middle school level vocabularies, they have this unearned sense of "holier than thou" moral superiority that makes them extra aggravating. While movies with killers with prideful moral superiority complexes can work, such as Kiefer Sutherland as The Voice in Phone Booth or Tobin Bell as The Jigsaw Killer in Saw, those movies at least had some level of self awareness that their killers were hypocritical scum doing ex post fact justifications of their actions. Knock Knock is more confused and feels like it muddled its intentions much like Nicolas Cage's Wicker Man remake where they replaced the Paganism/Christianity dynamic with a fundamentally confused masculinity/femininity dynamic. Roth tries to update the very 70s counterculture girls with updated equivalents for the digital age, but it comes off more as an excuse for Roth to amp up the annoyance of characters who were already pretty grating to begin with.

Knock Knock is Roth at his worst. While it's not as bad as his worst movie, Hostel Part II, by virtue of at least being unintentionally fascinating in some confusing choices it's still an unnecessary remake of a very flawed movie that is not approved upon save for technical details. It's not completely without merit thanks to some decent cinematography and brief moments of good acting, but if you have a choice between this and the original, stick with the original, for all its flaws it at least had the excuse of an inexperienced director.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

Architect Evan (Keanu Reeves) lives in a nice, swanky house with his wife Karen (Ignacia Allamand) and their two young boys. One weekend, Karen takes the boys away with her, leaving Evan on his own. He gets a surprise one night when two young women, Genesis (Lorenza Izzo) and Bell (Ana de Armas) knock on his door, claiming to have broken down and in need of a shower and a taxi. Initially pleasant, after luring Evan into a night of soaring passion, they then refuse to leave and subject him to a relentless, psychopathic barrage of violence and humiliation.

Playing like a variation on The Human Centipede set-up (and, by the end, astonishingly much more horrible than that film), despite not having much opening development between the main character and his loved ones, Knock Knock does manage to generate an interesting premise for the beginning. As soon as the girls arrive, knowing that things are going to take a sinister turn, it's intriguing to see just how this will play out and why. But after that, it just goes to pot and ends up leaving a really nasty taste in the mouth.

With elements of Phone Booth and Hard Candy chucked in to the plot, this skirts around the issue of young girls looking older than they are, and suckering older guys into going with them, an issue that's been playing in the media lately. But rather than using this as a plot device for some deep thought, it just degenerates into a relentlessly gratuitous and nasty piece of work, like a long winded, less grounded version of the superior British flick Cherry Tree Lane. Izzo and de Amis are a pair of seriously deranged, psychotic devil women, who just serve to distract from Reeves, who is as wooden as ever.

By the end, it's just started to become annoying and stupid, with only the theme from the end of Fight Club playing over the end credits to remind you of something better. You think of those two girls up the north of England who battered that woman to death in her house, and when you're expected to be entertained by something as dispiriting as this, it puts things in perspective. **

Knock Knock (2015)

*** (out of 4)

Husband and father Evan Webber (Keanu Reeves) is home alone working during a storm when two ladies (Lorenza Izzo, Ana de Armas) knock on his door asking for directions. Both women are wet and cold so Evan invites them into his house to wait for a taxi but they soon seduce them into a threesome. The next day Evan realizes his mistake and tries to get rid of the women but soon he realizes they have different plans.

Eli Roth is best known for his sadistic horror movies but he tries something different here and while the film is highly flawed I thought it was good enough for what it was trying to do. I'm not going to spoil what happens throughout the movie but I thought the twists were rather good and for the most part we got some nice performances. Again, if you're wanting high art then this isn't going to be for you but for my money it was a nice erotic thriller that was at least entertaining throughout.

On a technical level this is the best thing I've seen from Roth has he actually does a very good job in the directing department and there's no question that the film is well-made. I thought the director did a very good job at establishing the Evan character by showing him to be a good guy but of course even the best of people can make a mistake, which could change their life. Again, I'm not going to ruin the plan of these women but it's an interesting idea and I think the story is good enough to hold your attention throughout.

The performances are for the most part good. Reeves does a nice job in the role that requires quite a bit from him. This includes playing that lovable father but he also handles the seduction scenes quite well and the various scenes where he is being tortured both physically and mentally. Both Izzo and de Armas are good in their roles as they both play erotic very well and I thought they also managed to be believable in the more deadly nature. Most importantly is that all three have some good chemistry no matter what they're doing.

As I said there are some logical issues that I had with some of the things that happen throughout the picture and at times you want to hit Evan over the head yourself for doing some foolish things. Still, KNOCK KNOCK really did keep me entertained throughout the running time and I found it to be interesting and worth watching.

Despite the warnings from negative reviews and low IMDb rating i watched it anyway... I've always liked Eli Roth mainly for his near show stealing appearance as 'The Bear Jew' in Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds and his movies, though never groundbreaking for me, offered playful b-movie fun. His efforts here seemed to diminish after the initial creation of suspense. Once we move to the second act the script loses any credibility and little is left for creation of further suspense. It's almost as if the idea was to get Keanu to behave somewhat like Nicholas Cage in OMG mode. That idea i couldn't shake and ironically it became what kept me entertained, imagining cage instead of reeves, which wasn't too hard as Keanu seemed to channel the spirit of the rage cage as if he were possessed by him. Don't let my mention of cage fool you, the acting in this movie is sub par, if Keanu isn't The Wicker Man he's the wooden man and the girls act like female villains in a made for TV batman movie. In summary; I found a few things Keanu said in a serious monologue quite laugh out loud funny and the use of a popular pixies track at the end credits reminded me of a student movie using cool music to be cool. All it did was remind me of it's already iconic use in one of my favorite movies. The movie was just bad enough to enjoy it's shitness or i'd have not sat through it. Avoid this if you get offended by crap movies but I'm almost recommending you to watch this for the points I mentioned for your own curiosity. The movie stuck in my mind enough for m to waste time writing this review, i wonder if that was Roth's intention for the audience or he actually took this movie seriously.

Why on God's green earth what an actor, A class actor, like Keanu Reeves take this role?

Does he have financial difficulty we don't know about?

I could understand if this was one of his first roles and he was desperate. This was just so bad. The only thing worse than the movie was the ending.

The only decent thing about the movie was Keanu Reeves. Just terrible.

I wanted the two girls in the movie to die a slow and horrible death.