Movie Review: Knock Knock

Director: Eli Roth / Starring: Keanu Reeves, Lorenza Izzo, Ana de Armas, Aaron Burns & Ignacia Allamand / Writer(s):  Michael Ronald Ross(original script), Eli Roth, Nicolás López, Guillermo Amoedo & Anthony Overman

'Knock Knock' is a thriller about a 40-something husband and father who's spending his weekend alone at home while his family is away when two stranded young woman unexpectedly knock on his door for help. What starts out as a good gesture quickly turns to a decision Evan will regret for the rest of his life.

Evan(Reeves) is an architect who lives in a big house in well-to-do suburbia, has two beautiful children and an "exotic" artist wife(Allamand). He seemingly has the perfect life despite one slight flaw: he and his wife aren't having sex. The film starts out offering a bevy of evidence as to why he may or may not deserve everything that he has coming to him, but also all but explicitly says "hey, look at how great this guy's life is, but wait! he's not having sex with his wife? THAT SUCKS... DOESN'T IT?"

It does a decent job of setting things up, but it's heavily leading which isn't exactly bad thing as long as you're not doing it in way that makes sure anybody who's seen enough movies can predict what's gonna happen. And that's exactly what this film does. You could file this under the Chekov's gun principle, but depending on the crowd, it could either be seen as something neat or a plain cop-out. I think what separates those two crowds is 1) what the device is and its overall effect on the plot and 2) whether or not the time between when the Chekov's gun device is presented and when it's used is enthralling enough to make you forget it even if only for a moment. And in this movie said time is partly engaging, but the device(Evan's should injury) is inconsequential so it's definitely a cheap cop-out.

Evan's family goes away to their beach house for the weekend while he stays back to finish some work. When the two lost young women, Genesis(Izzo) & Bel(Armas) show up on Evan's doorstep soaking wet from the rain, he does what a decent human being would do, right? Keenu Reeves is notorious for his kind and solemn nature in real life and genuinely feel that part of him here so it's not a hard sell to believe he'd do something exactly like this in real life. Though, concerning his role solely you can't help but think from that slight twinkle in his eye that he might just be interested in doing more than helping the two young women.

Evan let's Genesis & Bel in, puts their clothes in the dryer and talks to them while waiting for a uber. Genesis & Bel soon try to flatter Evan and begin to casually talk about sex, alternative relationship dynamics and the supposed falsity of monogamy. They talk about sex in general in an idealistic way, which in theory is fine, everybody has their own lifestyle, but they talk about it in a way that's geared to appeal to any whoremongering man so you know this particular rhetoric is coming from these two not because they genuinely believe in it, but are simply using it as a tool of seduction, a way to warm Evan up to the idea of sleeping with them. And you can see he might be susceptible to it by the way perks up when compliment him and pretend to be interested in his djing days.  And sure enough, when he doesn't get the hint they resort stripping down naked, spewing some perfectly generic dirty talk straight out of a porno and he falls for it.

Once the deed is done, Evan wakes up the next day to Genesis & Bel running amok through his house, completely devoid of any maturity they seemed to have the night before. He eventually gets them to leave but things go dark when they return. They tie him up, torture and rape him. It's revealed they're playing at some sick game, punishing him for falling victim to their seduction. "I'm a good person. I made a mistake!" Evan says, decrying acts... adding that he loves his family and he's a good father. "Why didn't you think about your family when you were inside me?" to which he replies "My family had nothing to do with that." Exactly. But sadly, at that point in the film that's where any inkling of intelligence concerning the topic of infidelity stops.

Genesis & Bel are intelligent and resourceful, but their motives are poorly elaborated. It appears Bel's motivation stems from sexual abuse and Genesis' from a sense of resentment she has to the upper class. Solid motives, but not delved into enough to make you care. This could've been remedied with some compelling back and forth between Evan and the girls, but instead Roth opts out for some sequences of thrill that are quickly deflated by all too convenient instances of happenstance and half-hearted dialogue intent on delivering a message that's already overstated in society: cheating is bad. It's ironic that the common complaint about Roth's work is that he's indulgent when it comes to gore because he's surprisingly tame here and it's to the film's detriment.

Lorenza Izzo & Ana de Armas are fine actresses here, the script is just weak. Keanu Reeves plays the repressed family man, framed as the innocent and he does the gentle part of it well, but it's later revealed he's phoning it in when he hams up the scenes where he's upset. This is a film that had good actors, a premise with potential but just doesn't measure up in the end.