Knock Knock (2015)
"It was FREE PIZZA! What was I supposed to do? "
It’s Home-Invasion Weekend on Luke Honey’s WEEKEND FLICKS. Cinema for Grown Ups. On Friday, we visited one of The Avengers’ very last episodes: Take-Over, from 1969. Today, it’s Eli Roth’s Knock Knock (2015), a remake of Peter Traynor’s exploitation thriller Death Game from 1977— a darkly amusing and brilliant update for the social media generation.
Evan’s (Keanu Reeves) an early forty-something architect. A nice guy, living with Karen (Ignacia Allamand), his nice wife (blonde, of course), a successful sculptress who makes trendy stuff out of papier-mâché in the manner of Antoni Gaudí, and their nice, cute nuclear children (the Aryan breeding project), in a nice, comfortable, modernist square box of a house, like something from Channel 4’s Grand Designs, that presumably he’s designed himself. And there are two nice his n’ hers Volvo SUVs parked in the carport, and one of those ‘orrible, but fashionable, French Bulldog things.
And Evan’s house reflects all of this. It’s supposed to be set in Los Angeles (the unfortunate ash-heap of Pacific Palisades, perhaps?), but was filmed, actually, at a real-life house in Santiago, Chile. The set design is a stroke of domestic genius. There’s so much well, stuff: it’s bourgeoise Bohemian bliss: a Temple to Materialism: the extensive contemporary art collection, the trendy Aztec sculpture, the funky, post-modernist lighting; the carefully curated and ordered cultured clutter (‘vintage’ enamel shop signs in French), several ipads and a beautifully equipped kitchen with all the latest gadgets, plus a designer garden, stocked with agaves, aeoniums and other fashionable desert plants — and everywhere endless, endless portrait photographs of themselves and their perfect children, plastered all over their walls, framed as ‘art’ (one of my absolute ‘no-nos’ in interior decoration). It’s so insular and self-obsessed.
Knock Knock (2015), like The Servant (1963), Sleuth (1972) or Take-Over (1969), is one of those films in which the house is very much the star of the film. The handheld camera explores every nook and cranny, so that by the end of the film, it’s as if you know the place inside out. Anyway. Evan’s wife and children go away for the weekend (‘at the beach with the kids’), leaving him alone on Father’s Day, to his own devices. And again, we’re in Sleuth territory (“I’ve sent Mr and Mrs Hawkins away for a 48 hour paddle, they won’t be back until Sunday night. So the house is empty”). The house is a theatrical stage set for the unsavoury events to follow.
In the best tradition of Film Noir, there is, of course, a thunderstorm, and it’s raining. The deluge casts interesting shadows through the architectural slatted blinds: wife and children out of the way, a chance for a nice, cosy boy’s night in: a bottle of decent Californian red, Kiss’s Detroit Rock City on the deck, a catch-up on the work front, and a naughty pipe of Mary Jane. And then there’s a knock on the door. Two simpering, gum-chewing, giggly girls standing there, Jennifer Aniston midriffs, soaked to their bejewelled skins in the pouring rain. In tight T-shirts. Genesis (Lorenzo Izzo) and Bel (Ana de Armas). How old are they? Nineteen? Twenty? Twenty Two? Can they come in? They’ve lost their way. They need help. Their iPhones have died in the rain. Can they use Evan’s computer to look up an address? Oh, and they’re air stewardesses. Of course they are.
Ana’s seriously hot. A total sexpot. My understanding is that, at the time, she could barely speak English, and just read her lines as written, without really understanding them — not that it matters, as she’s a class act in the acting stakes. Nothing against Lorenzo Izzo, who’s goodish, but Ana just shines. Star quality. As with her equally impressive performance in Deep Water (2022), based on Patricia Highsmith’s psychological thriller, which we covered last year.
And poor, naive, dorkish Evan. He’s weak. He tries, he really does, sort of — he loves his wife and his children, he does, sure, but at the end of the day, his resistance is wanting. When a stronger, wiser and more worldly character would have smelt a manipulative sexual rat, cast aside his Neanderthal urge, and slung the girls out of the house, back into the street where they belong. As in Sleuth (1972), the second half of the film is an entirely different kettle of fish from the first. Then avuncular art dealer, Louis (Aaron Burns) turns up, reminding me of the Dick Halloran set-up in The Shining (1980), and it’s no two guesses what’s going to happen to him.
Although, against my better judgement, I am active on Instagram, and now, of course, Substack, I must confess that I have a problem with that scourge of journalism, X formerly known a Twitter, and the ubiquitous, brain-dead Facebook, a platform which strikes me as both dumbed down and stupifyingly bland — smug people posting photographs of themselves, their cute nuclear children, their pets and their expensive beach holidays. News, perhaps, that might be of interest to close friends and immediate family, but not to a broader audience. “Yesterday, I washed the dog”. I mean, who cares? Who gives a toss? Which is, perhaps, horribly unfair, even if there’s some truth in it. But it’s the equivalent of the dreaded 1960s slide show, with the exception that in 2025, you can, of course, always turn your computer off. You’re not trapped. Like you were back in 1967: come round to the house, have a bowl of Twiglets and a glass of Leibfraumilch! Spend the next two hours looking at colour slides of our Australian holiday, which, of course, just happened to cost an arm and a leg!
And this is where Knock Knock (2015) scores. I’ve seen it three or four times now, and I like it even more. The ending’s to die for: insightful and darkly amusing, if not hilarious: a perceptive social commentary on the sheer banality and herd mentality of social media. And the considerable power of women’s sexuality over men, and perhaps, even, their darker and intensely private sexual desires. But as is so often the case with contemporary cinema, Knock Knock (2015) has been flagged up with all the usual squeaky-clean Cromwellian alerts (yawn): flashing images, nudity & sex, violence, profanity, smoking, alcohol and substance abuse, ‘all items sold come from a smoke and pet-free home’ — which, of course, makes me want to watch it even more. And when compared, say, to The Night Porter (1974), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Scum (1979), Caligula (1979), The Vanishing (1988), Seven (1995), or Saw (2004), it’s pretty tame stuff.
The critics were all a bit so-so, although a more general audience on Netflix loved it. Yet, Dread Central — good on them — awarded Knock Knock (2015) a score of four out of five, saying “what we do have is a home invasion film for the social media generation (yes, it does feature social media in its plot) that should make you think twice before offering warmth and shelter to a stranger on a dark and stormy night.”
Reeves, named by People magazine as ‘1994’s Sexiest Man Alive’ and by The New York Times as ‘The World’s 4th Greatest Actor’, is actually rather good. And Ana de Armas — it was, I think, her first American film — is fabulous. As is the house (sans the portrait photography). It’s a buy.
I watched Knock Knock (2015) on Amazon Prime Video, and it’s also available on DVD and Blu-ray — and possibly Netflix in the United States. You will need to check.
That was Film No. 178 in the WEEKEND FLICKS. archive. And by now, I hope you know the form. Paid subscribers (a bargain £5 a month, or £50 a year) get two film recommendations every weekend (on Friday and Sunday mornings) plus access to the entire archive. Free subscribers get a snippet of the Friday post (nothing like dangling that metaphorical carrot) and the Sunday recommendation. A film doesn’t necessarily have to be ‘good’ (i.e. rated by the critics), but it does have to have something about it. Which makes it worth watching. And there’s one important rule. Every film we discuss needs to be readily available. Preferably via immediate digital download or via DVD, which can be bought easily online.
Right. I’ll be back on Friday with another tantalising film choice. In the meantime, why not stay in this evening and watch Knock Knock (2015)? And make sure the front door’s locked. Margheritas for this one. Until then, Ciao.
Nice one for covering this Luke! I went to see this in the cinema when it came out and was really intrigued by it, have watched it a couple of times since.
Ana de Armas steals the show in this for me. And thematically it hits all the right buttons, skewering the insular, self-obsessed social media materialists. But it also manages to evoke sympathy for Reeves’s character - because who could really resist knocking over the first domino in this situation?
Somehow missed this one. I'll see if I can get it on Prime.