Introduction
Knock Knock is a psychological thriller released in 2015 and directed and co-written by Eli Roth. The film features Keanu Reeves in an atypical role as the everyman ensnared in a horrific predicament. Lorenza Izzo and Ana de Armas provide unsettling supporting performances. Although marketed as a home-invasion thriller, Knock Knock loosely remakes the 1977 film Death Game and aims to blend suspense with a modern age multicultural critique on infidelity, social gender roles, surveillance, and feminist issues. With a limited setting and cast, and a morally twisted premise, the film received mixed–even rabid–reactions upon release.
Plot Summary
Evan Webber is a successful architect with a fulfilling career, a loving wife, and two children. At the story’s start, his wife Karen, along with the children, is departing for a beach weekend, allowing Evan to work and rest from his shoulder injury. The calm, suburban, and domesticated atmosphere rapidly shifts with the onset of a thunderstorm and a knock at the door.
Standing at the door are two women, Genesis and Bel, seeking shelter from the rain and claiming to be lost. They explain that their ride dropped them off nearby, and they need to use a phone. Although Evan is polite and somewhat reluctant, he allows them in. After helping them dry their phones and offering towels, he patiently waits for a rideshare to arrive. During this time, a prolonged period of flirtation ensues, first awkward, then increasingly overt. Despite numerous attempts to redirect the flirting, Evan ultimately surrenders and has a threesome with the women.
The morning after, he expects, and hopes, to have the encounter erased from reality like a terrible mistake. Instead, he finds himself ensnared in a psychological trap. The women begin to refuse to leave and as a result, start to vandalize his house, mocking him, torturing him for his moral failures. They systematically undermine and obliterate his life. He watches as they deface family portraits, shatter furniture, and cryptically reference past victims. They strip him of every semblance of stability, and the need to exert control violently escalates into utter humiliation.
Evan’s pleas go unheard and lavish gifts go unappreciated. What once seemed like an innocent encounter has now revealed itself to be premeditated. Genesis and Bel record their provocation, and Evan’s desperate attempts to beg for his release, capturing his uttermost disarray. They go on to defame him as a predator by releasing the footage on his social media. In a disturbing twist, they temporarily restrain him, enact his suicide, and dig a shallow grave in his backyard. Notably, they later disclose that killing him was never their intention.
The house lies in turmoil, and for Evan, he is left tarnished. He is lingering in the yard buried neck deep and screaming. From his perspective, the dog is gone, his wife and children aren’t home, and soon enough they would return to reveal the footage. To make it worse, all of this can be accessed publically. The final shot of the film reveals Evan tapping “Like” on the video, showcasing his downfall.
Character Overview:
Evan Webber played by Keanu Reeves is described as a devoted husband who fosters a family but has a significant blunder. Evans character begins with courtesy, which gradually leads to desperation and rage as the narrative progresses. Reeves portrays Webber’s transformation from calm, composed, and polite to frenzied as his life shatters around him defying the stoic action-hero character.
As the film’s antagonists, Genesis (Lorenza Izzo) and Bel (Ana de Armas) are both chilling and charismatic. Though their motivations remain ambiguous, their cruelty is stark. They claim to be “punishing” cheating men and taking advantage of society’s discrimination, but their history is purposefully left vague.
Karen Webber (Ignacia Allamand), Evan’s wife, is mostly offscreen. She symbolizes Evan’s stable life, and her absence and return frame the chaos that unfolds.
Louis (Aaron Burns) is Evan’s friend who stops by to check on him. He meets a grim fate in an asthma attack that is played for dark comedy.
Themes and Interpretation
Knock Knock is steeped in discomforting themes that defy audience expectations. At the heart of the narrative is the notion of consent, coercion, and responsibility. The film challenges the audience by examining the victim and perpetrator dichotomy, asking whether one misstep can render a life irreparably broken.
In horror cinema, the home is often a safe haven but it becomes a trap in this case. Every comfort such as a record player, family photo, and even a computer is turned into a weapon by Genesis and Bel. It is now apparent that the film interrogates the boundaries of safety and privacy in regard to the current era of technology. Social media serves as a shame and exposure tool. The attackers not only use it to humiliate Evan but also to totally reframe the narrative, rendering him socially and physically powerless.
Despite being controversial, there are feminist undertones. The women frame themselves as avengers to infidelity and argue that men, when granted the chance, will always choose to cheat. The film attempts a perverse form of justice, leading to the debate of whether this narrative partially empowers women or reduces them to demented caricatures lacking depth. Likewise, Evan is presented as a victim while simultaneously active in his own demise, which introduces some moral ambiguity in the tale.
Production Style
Utilizing a single location and minimal cast, the film succeeds by employing minimalism. The house, although modern and filled with art, is a juxtaposition to the disorder brought about by the attackers. The cinematography, while the story descends into chaos, remains orderly and steady. It does not rely on elaborate special effects; rather, it is a psychological unraveling crafted through manipulation, dialogue, and sustained tension.
Eli Roth, the director, keeps the film moving at a steady pace. The initial buildup is relaxed and slow, but utterly disarming in the calm that precedes the frantic and surreal turning point. While Roth is known for extreme horror, in Knock Knock, he instead shows restraint by avoiding gore and embracing social and emotional horror. The fear of social exposure, humiliation, and losing control takes precedence over physical harm.
Reception
The film premiered to a mix of positive and negative reviews. Knock Knock critics were split on the tone, the overarching themes, and the performances given. Some positive reviews praised the film for attempting morality play, subverting genre conventions. Other reviews called it shallow and implausible, or simply exploitative. Keanu Reeves’s performance divided people too; some found it compelling while others deemed it overacted, especially his outbursts towards the end of the film.
Although the film did not do well at the box office, it fostered a cult following because of its controversial premise and the now-superstar Ana de Armas. The film has become the subject of social media and horror forum discussions because of its controversy and the minimalist style.
Conclusion
Knock Knock is a morally and genre-bending home-invasion thriller that is part of the disturbing modern strain of the subgenre. It poses a series of moral puzzles such as: what one might do to deserve their trust being put upon them, what justice should be expected for misplaced trust, and what would temptation lead one into.[ In a world, ruthlessly governed by temptation, trust, and justice. With it’s bold portrayal of betrayal masked as kindness, it causes the viewer to reflect.] In the context of genre, this film is rather bare-boned in terms of setting. It includes bold acting from the performers and Eli Roth’s controversial directorial choices which make his filmography even more unorthodox as a whole, placing it into a camp that remains unforgivingly thought-provoking in the most beautiful, gritty way.
In all lenses one could choose to view Knock Knock through, the imagery it paints speaks for itself; caution or no caution, a tale of feminist revenge or satire masked with horror. This film is not prone to delivering solace to its audience, not for a second. While that’s not the norm for a thriller, that’s precisely what keeps it sparking debate years after release.
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