Knock Knock (2015) review

Dir. Eli Roth

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

I don’t have a good excuse as to why I missed, or, maybe more accurately, outright ignored Eli Roth’s Knock Knock when it was released back in 2015. Chalk it up to the busy, transitory time in my life (my sophomore year of college); or perhaps the exceedingly poor reviews. It also barely saw a release in theaters (22 multiplexes was its peak engagement), but has since developed a small following of its own amongst Roth devotees and of course that sector of the internet that loves Keanu Reeves.

Knock Knock is in fact a remake of Peter S. Traynor’s scuzzy, sexploitation flick Death Game from 1977. The two actresses from that film, Sondra Locke and Colleen Camp, are credited as producers on Roth’s film, with Camp gifted an amusing little cameo for those privy of the connection. Roth’s story not only achieves forward momentum and the perpetual discomfort it seeks to arise, but it also retains plausibility and attempts the integration of social media when, viewed in retrospect, was just getting started into the machine we know it as today.

The film opens by showing the posh life of Evan Webber (Reeves) and his artist wife Karen (Ignacia Allamand), along with their two young children. They live in a sprawling estate that is littered with Karen’s sculptures, and the cutesy hallmarks of upper-middle class life show Evan as a good, attentive father, who could use a little more sex if him and his wife weren’t so damned busy. In other words, the standard fare of married couples.

Karen and the kids trek off to the beach, leaving Evan to fend for himself for Father’s Day as he looks to smoke a little weed and get some work done. Just as Evan is about to spark up, two wet, scantily clad young women, named Genesis (Lorenza Izzo) and Bel (Ana de Armas), show up on his doorstep and ask for directions to a party. They say they’re lost, after a cab dropped them off at the wrong location.

Evan invites the two nubiles into his home, and goes as far as to wash their garments while giving them bathrobes. While the clothes cycle, he tells them about his former life as a club DJ. He resists the urge to lead them on, even sitting on a separate chair, away from them as they dial up the flirting. That resistance soon turns into “not resistance,” and Evan eventually succumbs to a wild — albeit tastefully shot — threesome with Genesis and Bel.

Cut to the next morning, and Knock Knock really assumes the look and feel of a Roth movie; however, one with significantly less bloodshed. The girls have trashed Evan and Karen’s home, the most tragic aspect being the destruction of her sculptures. The two went as far as to emblazon “ART DOES NOT EXIST” on one of them. The entire home is vandalized, and just as Evan moves to call the police, the girls claim they are both 15-years-old and that Evan will be indicted on statutory rape, among other unsavory charges. Evan is at the mercy of his supposed one-night stand turning into a never-ending nightmare of blackmail and vindictiveness over caving into sexual impulses.

It might not be the most flattering comparison, but Knock Knock reminded me a great deal of Neil LaBute’s much-maligned Wicker Man, specifically how Nicolas Cage’s over-the-top acting helped make an otherwise vanilla work of genre-fare that much more compelling. The same applies to Reeves, who is at first miscast as someone worthy of such torture at the hands of two young women. Reeves has worked hard to maintain his profoundly private, squeaky-clean, good-guy image, so to see him brutally beaten, not to mention prove unfaithful to his wife and family, seems shockingly untoward for a man of his caliber. But had Reeves been replaced by an actor who exuded reckless masculinity and the vibes of a jock who never left high school, it might’ve lessened the effectively mean-spirited tone of Roth’s remake. It also would’ve likely lessened the desperation and hilarity that comes with Reeves’ monologue, breathlessly delivered in expletive-laden fragments, none better than “Starfish? Husbands? You don’t give a fuck, you’ll just fuck anything!”

Roth and cinematographer Antonio Quercia stylize Knock Knock like a 90s erotic thriller, one that restrains from favoring explicit sex and instead doubles down on tension. If there’s a shortcoming with the film, it’s that it doesn’t show the external repercussions of Evan’s actions all that clearly. Genesis and Bel forge text messages, and erroneously post on his Facebook page, but none of that seems to translate into anything noticeably affecting. With social media being the big addition to this remake, that was something to be anticipated. Still, Roth is at his best when the singular attraction to his features isn’t the obvious gore, and Knock Knock shows the director, when restrained from his splatter impulses, can produce an effective and memorable thriller.

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Lorenza Izzo, Ana de Armas, Ignacia Allamand, Aaron Burns, and Colleen Camp. Directed by: Eli Roth.