Hell Reviews: Knock Knock - May contain minor spoilers...like it's awful.

 

Synopsis: Keanu Reeves stars in this home invasion thriller directed by Eli Roth. Left at home alone while his wife and children are away for the weekend, Evan Webber (Reeves) receives a late night visit from two attractive rain-soaked young women asking to use his phone. But after letting the girls inside and allowing them to use his shower and dry off their clothes, the night takes a turn as the two girls seduce Evan to thank him for his hospitality. Reluctant at first, Evan eventually gives in to temptation but not without suffering the consequences...

 

What happened Keanu?

Was this a quick money maker?

You actually had talent years ago and now this shoddy film has made me wonder if maybe I’m having nostalgia over an actor I haven’t seen in enough movies to have nostalgia over.

But Knock Knock was just so bad.

The premise of the film had so much promise, so how the hell did it fall this far?

The story of a father and husband being seduced into a threesome and then tormented for his mistake sounds like it could be a great idea, if it had been written better.

It goes without saying that this particular films seems to have gained a wonderful title of one of the worst films to come out that year and it’s not hard to see why.

Unfortunately it’s another of Eli Roth’s films that I will mentally slap myself for watching, and I know it’s bad when I can remember who the director is as I don’t pay attention to such things usually, but he’s proven in the past to be a disappointment.
I’m looking at you Hostel…and Cabin Fever….

To start off with Keanu’s character, Evan Webber, made such a drastic shift in a matter of minutes that it made no sense.

He goes from loving and devoted husband and father, hard working architect type to a cheater and a complete imbecile in mere seconds.
Now I know some people would defend it with; “But it’s two hot girls being easy and asking for it, who wouldn’t go for it? Heheh.”
Let me tell you, most men who give a damn about their family like he is originally shown to be, as weird as it may sound to say it, a man like my dad wouldn’t fall into such a pitiful trap because he has more respect for my mum than he would for two random women who think they’re clearly all that and can simply get away with it just because.
But we got to get the plot rolling somehow!

It’s one of the things I dislike about such things, rather than give us good story telling they’d rather get into showing the sexy women and torture so screw logical characters and motivation, and sometimes this may be forgivable but when the story you’re given leads to nothing and you’re supposed to live with “It happened just because,” then it makes Hell a very unhappy girl.

This isn’t to say that I need things painted out for me, but sometimes it’s nice to have a little motivation to go with your torture.
It wouldn’t have even taken much, a small change to make him in an unhappy marriage whilst not creating a masterpiece would offer some form of reasoning to why he’d go for it and I’m not buying that moment of weakness crap either.
Sometimes ‘just because’ isn’t enough, at least in The Strangers they said it was just because they were home, but Knock Knock feels like it’s trying to deliver a message and falls on its face halfway to your post box after tripping out of its delivery van.

The two girls were the worst antagonists ever, everything they did made my eyes roll.

From their more than obvious innocent act to the ‘we’re insane and can kill you’ act.
Who thought these characters up?
Never once did I get the impression that these girls are veteran cheater killers like they seem to imply that they are.
I also don’t understand the logic of going to relentless seduction attempts to make someone cheat and then punishing them for it.
I’d rather have seen this based on a character who is shown to be a serial cheater and scumbag than on someone who hasn’t seemed to do anything to anyone until pushed to it.
It just doesn’t make sense to me, it’s like making someone eat cake and then laughing at them and calling them fat because you made them eat the cake.

I admit that I am guilty of enjoying a good home invasion movie, they don’t even have to make sense but the feats in this film are just impossible. From how destructive they’re being around the house to how quickly they can move around and get changed seemed inhumanly quick, unless there’s meant to be a time lapse that isn’t even implied.

I can really enjoy characters who are a bit screwed in the head, take Mileena from Mortal Kombat and Tira from Soulcalibur, they are two of my favourite characters in video games and they’re bat-shit crazy, so why in films do the nutty women always make me groan and roll my eyes or physically cringe at the way they’re acting?

Not to mention that people with the attitudes they showed annoy the hell out of me and I honestly can’t suspend my disbelief to rationalise some of the stuff they managed to accomplish.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not one to think that girls can’t accomplish anything involving a man, but there are also natural limits when you look at basic physics of two tiny, scrawny girls who look like the wind could blow them over and someone of Keanu’s build.
Why did Evan not just punch one of these girls in the throat and then take out the other one whilst her friend was down?
He slapped one of them and choked another so clearly harming them isn’t a moral issue, so why didn’t he fight back like his life was genuinely on the line…which it was!
They were open on so many occasions and yet somehow they managed to outwit and overpower him ludicrously easily multiple times.
I also dislike it in these kind of films where anyone who comes into the picture that could actually help always gets easily taken out, with the most minimum of effort at that.
Even worse is that we’re supposed to believe that they’ve done this multiple times and haven’t been caught?
That’s absolutely ridiculous.
Then again I’m one of these people where I get irrationally annoyed when we’re supposed to believe this character is able to outwit everyone and pulls the wool over everyone’s eyes when it’s clear as day it’d never work in real life. (I’m looking at you Amnesiac.)
Technically I have no place to be taking entertainment from the fictional world if I’m that finicky about things.

The creators clearly had no idea how basic things seemed to work either, like when you call the police. Here I was thinking that if you hung up on the emergency services that they’d attempt to call you back and then dispatch the police to investigate if you don’t pick up, especially after you just spoke the words; “I’d like to report a break in.”

But I’m not part of the police force nor a dispatcher, so what do I know?

Who are we supposed to be rooting for?

At first you want to try and sympathise with Keanu Reeve’s character, but he cheated and cheating is a massive ‘no’ in my books. Not to mention the fact that he wasn’t man enough to stand his ground and decline their awfully obvious seduction tactics, how are we supposed to root for someone who just went for it?

That and he’s a completely unrelatable character, and that’s mainly because he’s so wooden and dull that there’s no personality there.

The girls aren’t the type I’d root for either, crazy for crazies sake doesn’t get me excited and I have, quite often, in the past found myself slightly disappointed when the antagonists I can actually wave a flag for get their comeuppance.

But that takes good writing and dialogue, something this film needs drastically.

 
The acting was simply horrific, but it goes along with the execution of the story really, completely crap and not worth your time, and I have seen some terrible acting in my life (I mean let’s face it, I’m a Supernatural fan and some of the acting on there can be questionable at best.)
The dog, Monkey, however was pretty cool, can’t fault that stellar acting.

The constant 'sexy' acting got tiring really fast, but I'm not part of the audience who these two moderately attractive girls are supposed to be appealing to.
Their act got tired quickly, especially the blonde Bel's constant 'daddy' talk during one scene, it wasn't sexy, it wasn't cute, it was just annoying and went on for too long.

If executed in a half decent way this film could have done for tormenting cheaters what Hard Candy did for tormenting suspected paedophiles, too bad it just seemed to be an excuse for the director to show off his ‘hot wife’.

Take a back seat Resident Evil, there’s a new wife flaunter in town.