Keanu Reeves plays as Evan, a man who seems to have a perfect life - nice house, well-paying job, good friends, nuclear family, etc. - but he does seem a little sexually frustrated. In the opening scene we have him nearly starting with his wife, before being interrupted by the kids, followed by things getting a little tense when she refuses to get back to it, with a mention that it had been at least three weeks. This is all before the family go on a vacation, leaving Evan on his own at the house to work for the weekend.
*Knock Knock* Evan hears a knock at the door a few hours into his work, and when he opens it he finds two beautiful women (Lorenza Izzo and Ana de Armas) lost and shivering in the rain. He invites them in to help them find their way, and bit by bit they disarm him, one suggestion at a time, until he's in bed having a three-way with them.
This fever dream turns into a nightmare as the girls then use this to their advantage and systematically destroy Evan's life.
It takes a long time to set up, but it's a compelling premise, and all three actors take to roles with glee. Reeves works as a blank slate who mostly acts as a surrogate for the male audience, expressing rage and fear as needed, and Izzo and Armas a positively sadistic in the most exasperating way.
That said, therein lies part of the problem with the film. The motivation of the women are never explained in any detail, which adds to their infuriating effect, but leaves you with nothing to develop from a storytelling perspective. Acts 2&3 are basically various methods of torture for Evan, and little else. We find out that this was all preordained by the women, but we never find out how they knew anything about Evan to begin with, how they knew he would be home that weekend, etc., they may quite literally be succubi, but we'll never know. This would be fine if they were doing what they were doing for kicks, but the end suggests that they have an actual purpose in doing this; the movie ends up being all intrigue and buildup with no payoff.
The tone is somewhat inconsistent, mostly filling you with dread, with a few moments where what happens on screen is so incredulous that you can really only laugh in disbelief. The film appears to be trying to balance its horror with some social commentary, but the two never really gel. The lack of overall development of the women's motivations makes any effort they actually take to hint at their purpose comes off as forced. In the end we are left with a movie that seems to tell us that women can simply be evil, without reason or point.
The Verdict: Knock Knock is a competently directed movie with an interesting premise that does a good job of suggesting ideas, but a poor job of developing them. The acting isn't stellar, but it isn't truly awful, and ultimately the film is fun to watch in a sort of bleak and depressing way. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone unless they were already an Eli Roth fan, and the heavy amount of overt sexual content, violence and adult themes means you really shouldn't be showing this to children.
Rating: 5/10
Watched Januray 5th, 2016, Published July 4th, 2016
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