KNOCK KNOCK’s opening plays like one of those Penthouse Forum “name withheld by request” letters but director Eli Roth quickly dumps the sexy stuff in favor of presenting a cautionary tale about the consequences of infidelity.
When we first meet the Webbers they are a happy, 1% family with a home perched high in the Hollywood Hills. Karen (Ignacia Allamand) is an artist with a major show coming up at a Los Angeles gallery, Evan (Keanu Reeves) is an architect and their adorable kids are, well, just adorable. They even have a French Bulldog named Monkey. Cute.
With Karen and the children off to the beach for the weekend Evan is home alone, listening to KISS 1976 album “Destroyer” at top volume, caught up in his work. It’s raining cats and dogs when he hears a knock at the door. (NOTE: This is the Penthouse Forum “name withheld by request” part.) On his doorstep are two drenched women, Bel (Ana de Armas) and Genesis (Lorenza Izzo), scantily clad party-goers looking for directions and a phone. “You don’t look so dangerous,” Evan says as he invites them in, “Worst case scenario, I think I can take both of you.”
Things quickly get flirty with talk of threesomes, flight attendants and clothes being thrown in the dryer. By the time the sun rises the next morning everyone has gotten naked, vows have been broken (NOTE: This is the end of the Penthouse Forum “name withheld by request” part.) and the girls have taken over the house. Destructive and dangerous, Bel and Genesis stage a home-invasion-with-a-twist topped off by staging a fake game show called Who Wants to Punish a Pedophile?
KNOCK KNOCK, directed by Eli Roth is based on the 1977 film DEATH GAME starring Colleen Camp and Sondra Locke (both are producers on this film) and is a deeply unpleasant movie. It’s supposed to be nasty, so in that way it’s wildly successful, but that won’t make me any more inclined to sit through it again. I guess you could call it a message film about the evils of faithlessness but the moral gets lost in the shenanigans. Evan is repeatedly punished for his transgression but the Dangerous Duo’s repetitive cat and mouse games get tired very quickly and, save for the odd bit of dark humor—like Evan accidentally “Liking” a sex video on Facebook—the movie is a one trick pony.
What makes KNOCK KNOCK unusual is the male lead’s complete inability to protect himself. Time after time he is close to getting free only to bollocks it up. As a result he lands in some very bad situations giving Bel and Genesis the upper hand throughout. But don’t confuse this with a grrrl power movie. In the end, it’s little more than a down ‘n dirty exploitation flick that aims to be provocative but instead paints all its characters as victims and knocks female empowerment back twenty years.
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