Knock Knock

After the less than stellar box office return of Hostel Part II, Eli Roth blamed the internet and swore off making films for a long time. In fact, he hasn't directed another movie since then. He's produced, starred in and wrote a few, but never touched the camera again, except for the sniper film that plays in Inglorious Basterds and the Thanksgiving segment from Grindhouse. Almost ten years later and we have not one, but two feature films from Roth. The Green Inferno, which was actually completed in 2013, but held up until now, and the erotic horror thriller Knock Knock, which is a remake of 1977 film Death Game.

Did Roth coming back from "retirement" encourage me to see the film? Was it the deranged sexual element that would draw me in? No, it was Keanu Reeves my friend. Everything else didn't matter to me, I wanted to see Keanu Reeves in movies again. He did a kick ass job in John Wick, now I was going to see if he would be able to play a helpless cheat who is terrified for his life. A role that is really against type for him. Can Reeves pull it off? The man has been labeled emotionless in a lot of his film roles, so this would seem like it would require him to dig down and actually act. Now, he does manage to scream, freak out and indeed, act terrified at times, but there is always and I mean always, something off about his performances. Maybe it's his monotone voice or the deadness behind his eyes, but it doesn't always come off well. Don't get me wrong, I highly enjoy a lot of his work, but a great thespian the man is not. It looks like the man is trying here, I'm not too sure if he pulls it off too well.

Reeves plays Evan, an architect who has to stay at home for the long weekend and work, while his wife and two kids go to the beach house. One stormy night, he hears a knock at his door, two young beautiful women are stranded and need his help. While inside, they manage to seduce him, despite his constant resistance. The next morning he finds out that they won't leave, not without playing a game with him being an unwilling participant.

So the premise alone seems like a typical invasion torture horror flick, with the added element of sex and the intruders being young hot women. Once that is out of the way, the film offers nothing new or insightful. Roth, a man who knows a thing or two about the genre, tries to amp of the suspense a bit, but falls into the same generic traps all these films do. Knock Knock isn't sexy enough, nor terrifying enough. I guess it must just feel weird to direct your wife in a naked threesome with Keanu Reeves.

The question people will be asking themselves is, will Reeves live or die by the end of the film. I won't spoil how it ends, but the build up to that final situation is decent enough to make the film almost watchable. The denouement is completely wrong though and adds an unneeded comedic joke that is literally the very end of the film. You go through this long torturous journey with Reeves, only to have it end with a one liner? Really odd choice that left me scratching my head with disappointment. I wanted some kind of answer to what would happen next, but never got it. Roth leaves a little hint here or there, but I guess I wanted something a little more concrete.

What the film does accomplish is me, never opening my door to anyone. Not even two young, beautiful, wet women who beg me to let them inside so they can have sex with me. That's just for my dreams.

There are already ...261 (!) reviews for this B (or maybe C?) movie that came out only 2 months ago and that means something, i think.

First of all this is a remake of the movie "Death Game (1977)" starring Sondra Locke and Colleen Camp. The 2 women are serving as producers in the 2015 version while Colleen Camp also stars in a minor role.

This is Camp-y movie (pun intended!) with a lot of torture horror and a couple (mild in my opinion) erotic scenes. The 2 main actresses Lorenza Izzo and Ana de Armas look crazy enough but Keanu Reeves's performance leave a lot to be desired. Maybe we have used to see him as a hero (from the Matrix to John Wick) and we cannot accept to watch him being lame and weak.

There is obviously a moral here, but the question "who could resist" is also strongly present.

As a movie it's OK and you might have some fun watching it, but if you can't stand movies where the "hero" does all the wrong moves maybe you should avoid it. The direction of photography is bright and that's a plus, but if you are a careful viewer you will find a lot of goofs including numerous continuity errors which could ruin some of the fun.

In the end you might want for the movie to last a couple of minutes more to see the outcome or even the true motives of what just happened...

Overall: Not as bad as most of the other 261 reviews might want you to believe. (Some of them compare Keanu Reeves's recent choices to those of Nicolas Cage, so they might be driven by some hate). See it if you want a light campy thriller for the evening.

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. **

I pretty much never leave a review for a movie.

I also pretty much never stop a movie or book before I finish it.

This movie was so bad that both happened. It's complete trash. The characters are unbelievable, the situation is absurd, and the acting leaves a lot to be desired. It's incredibly slow and there's basically no story or reason to be invested.

Avoid.

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.