KNOCK KNOCK

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Lorenza Izzo, Ana De Armas
Writers: Eli Roth, Nicolas Lopez, Guillermo Amoedo
Director: Eli Roth

*** THIS REVIEW CONTAINS A FEW SPOILERS - YOU CAN THANK ME LATER ***

Evan Webber (Reeves) is a happily married man - remember this, folks, because this movie won't hammer home this point at all - who finds his life crashing down around him when he gets a night-time visit from foxy young ladies Genesis (Izzo) and Bel (De Armas) in Eli Roth's latest thriller, which is a take on the 1977 movie Death Game which saw Colleen Camp and Sondra Locke terrorising Seymour Cassel. Camp appears here in a small role and both she and Locke are credited amongst the producers of this update. As far as the pedigree of the talent involved goes, I liked Hostel a lot and I'm looking forward to Roth's eventually-to-be-released The Green Inferno (which was actually shot before this one). Reeves was terrific in actionfest John Wick. So where did this all go wrong?

Well, it doesn't get off to the most auspicious of starts, the opening scenes throwing in so many overused tropes of happily married life that it becomes unintentionally ridiculous. Aw! His wife loves him so much! Aw! His kids love him so much! Aw! They bought him a really sweet present for Father's Day! Aw! They got him a cake! Aw! He pretends he's a monster and chases them! Aw! His wife nearly gets into an argument with him but they decide not to fight because they LOVE EACH OTHER SO VERY VERY MUCH! Aw!

So, ten or so minutes in and Evan's adorable missus and adorable kids have disappeared to their house at "the beach" because Evan has some important architectural work to do and it has to be done over that weekend. Like all really important architectural projects have to be done over weekends. "Hey, have you finished work on the plans for that new state-of-the-art skyscraper?" "I'll have them done this weekend." "What were you doing for the rest of the time that we set aside for this?" "Er..."

But I digress. Evan's hard at work on his latest architecture project, listening to Detroit Rock City on his fancy, very expensive sound system and only stopping to have a FaceTime conversation with his wife to hammer home the point that they both LOVE EACH OTHER SO VERY VERY MUCH when there's a knock (knock) on the door and things just degenerate - for both Evan and the audience - from there.

To be honest, I was ready for an enjoyable, pulpy thrill ride and I was prepared to let a whole load of believability slide in the name of entertainment. However, I wasn't quite prepared for the enormous, cataclysmic landslip of believability that was passing before my eyes and the whole thing collapses under the weight of its numerous improbabilities. Okay, I can buy Keanu's character eventually falling for these two girls - although he doesn't sell it particularly well, nor does the script - but I don't buy him believing what follows when the girls reveal to him that they're underage and that he's looking at a statutory rape charge if he doesn't play ball. Ahem, excuse me, but neither of them looks remotely underage. One of them looks older than I do. Actually, that's not quite true but you get the idea. At this point in the plot, Evan - who's been painted as a reasonably intelligent individual from the get-go - gets a severe attack of the stupids and doesn't even bother asking them any questions about it.

This film also features someone discovering a person who's tied up but then has them immediately go to investigate a noise instead of untying the person first and then having them both investigate the noise together. Even by horror/thriller standards, these characters are monumentally dumb to the point where you think they wouldn't have even got to the house in the first place because they would have been stuck miles away trying to work out which shoe was the left one and which shoe was the right one. I'm sorry, even something as far-fetched as this has to work on some sort of logical level and for me this just took way too many liberties.

The acting is all over the place. Reeves looks awkward when he's being seduced by the girls, which is fine, but he looks awkward when he's playing superdad at the beginning and he looks awkward when he's being victimised in the second half of the movie. Izzo and De Armas, as the psycho tag-team, are more shrill and annoying than threatening for most of the running time and they generally come across as spoiled rather than genuinely dangerous which fatally deflates any tension that might have been generated from the situation. Also, the movie takes an awfully long time to get to the meat of the plot - about fifty minutes by my reckoning - and the slow build-up doesn't get the payoff it should. The potential was certainly there to make a solid, creepy exploitation flick but unfortunately there's very little here to genuinely disturb or indeed engage.

So, is it the worst film I've seen this year? After all of the above, you may be surprised to learn that the answer to that question is no. Mortdecai, that honour is still yours. However, Knock Knock is a major disappointment and doesn't even fall into the "so bad it's good" category. This, I'm really sorry to say, is just plain bad. Even so, I'm still holding out hope that The Green Inferno will deliver the queasy shocks that this movie plainly doesn't.

Oh, and just one more thing. Closing the movie with the Pixies' track "Where Is My Mind?" - no. Just no. You made me think of Fight Club. Which made me think that I would have so much rather watched Fight Club again.