Knock Knock is what you get when you take a porn movie, cut-off four fifths of all the sex that follows the intro, and then fill the gaps with comedy horror scenes. Specifically, the story starts when Evan, a likeable family man who gets a visit from two skimpy, sexy, rain-soaked women one night. Evan acts the gentleman and lets them in to lend his phone. It is clear the two women have something else on their mind though; they want sex, and also a bunch of other things Evan never signed up for.
If you've seen the trailer, you've basically seen the movie. Things quickly go very bad for Evan, who soon finds himself beset by the two literal home wreckers. As a premise, it is solid enough, but Knock Knock depends a little too much on that premise to carry the movie all the way through. There isn't enough to the story or characters to flesh things out properly. The two women are one dimensional lunatics who are acting with no apparent purpose, leaving Keanu Reeves to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to character work. He does a marvellous job of channelling his inner Nicholas Cage, screaming all his absurd dialogue with absolute sincerity. It isn't enough though, and unfortunately the paucity of character and script results in lots of unnecessary repetition. It feels like a third of this movie consists of a hog tied Evan, trying to get a hold of a phone over and over again.
Then there is the sticky politics. One appeal of the film is in trying to figure out what possible motive these two ladies have for torturing Evan, but the ultimate reason (I don't respect the film enough to worry about spoilers) is they are basically doing it for it's own sake. They say they are playing this game because Evan decided to have sex with them and if he had said no they would have done nothing. But that's patently untrue because Evan went to great lengths to brush off their sexual advances, and they basically raped him. I feel like a lot has changed politically in the three years since this movie came out (2015), but a better writer would have not gone with that angle in the first place.
It's a let down. The women seem to have a supernatural level of insight into Evan's world, which could have easily led the story down some kind of religious terror angle. Or perhaps the two could have represented the inner demons of Evan's repressed emotions. Instead, we are shown a couple of brats who you utterly despise, and Evan comes off as a saint by comparison. Maybe giving him some kind of personal failing or emotional weakness would have been the necessary element to round out the story and give him a third dimension.
Knock Knock has more in common with pornography than I first thought; a movie of attractive people going through soulless, repetitive motions.
Film A Medieval Morality Play, Gone Wrong
Knock Knock is what you get when you take a porn movie, cut-off four fifths of all the sex that follows the intro, and then fill the gaps with comedy horror scenes. Specifically, the story starts when Evan, a likeable family man who gets a visit from two skimpy, sexy, rain-soaked women one night. Evan acts the gentleman and lets them in to lend his phone. It is clear the two women have something else on their mind though; they want sex, and also a bunch of other things Evan never signed up for.
If you've seen the trailer, you've basically seen the movie. Things quickly go very bad for Evan, who soon finds himself beset by the two literal home wreckers. As a premise, it is solid enough, but Knock Knock depends a little too much on that premise to carry the movie all the way through. There isn't enough to the story or characters to flesh things out properly. The two women are one dimensional lunatics who are acting with no apparent purpose, leaving Keanu Reeves to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to character work. He does a marvellous job of channelling his inner Nicholas Cage, screaming all his absurd dialogue with absolute sincerity. It isn't enough though, and unfortunately the paucity of character and script results in lots of unnecessary repetition. It feels like a third of this movie consists of a hog tied Evan, trying to get a hold of a phone over and over again.
Then there is the sticky politics. One appeal of the film is in trying to figure out what possible motive these two ladies have for torturing Evan, but the ultimate reason (I don't respect the film enough to worry about spoilers) is they are basically doing it for it's own sake. They say they are playing this game because Evan decided to have sex with them and if he had said no they would have done nothing. But that's patently untrue because Evan went to great lengths to brush off their sexual advances, and they basically raped him. I feel like a lot has changed politically in the three years since this movie came out (2015), but a better writer would have not gone with that angle in the first place.
It's a let down. The women seem to have a supernatural level of insight into Evan's world, which could have easily led the story down some kind of religious terror angle. Or perhaps the two could have represented the inner demons of Evan's repressed emotions. Instead, we are shown a couple of brats who you utterly despise, and Evan comes off as a saint by comparison. Maybe giving him some kind of personal failing or emotional weakness would have been the necessary element to round out the story and give him a third dimension.
Knock Knock has more in common with pornography than I first thought; a movie of attractive people going through soulless, repetitive motions.