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.
