 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Knock Knock • Year: 2015 • Country: USA, Chile • Director: Eli Roth • Main cast: Keanu Reeves, Lorenza Izzo, Ana de Armas • Runtime: 99 minutes • Production company: Black Bear Pictures, Camp Grey, Dragonfly Entertainment • TRAILER |
Eli Roth is one of those personalities in the cinema world that you can’t help but to love. Brings fun interviews, is very active at the social networks, appears as actor for fun cameos or bigger roles in his and other people’s movies… Like many others do, that’s true, but always with a smile on his face. The media put him under the shadow of Quentin Tarantino, althogh all they have in common is friendship and love for classic and horror movies, not because their style is alike. And that was as well a good thing and a bad thing. In any case, Eli Roth is one of those cases of filmmakers that always manages to create expectations with every new project he’s involved into.
So when we heard of Knock Knock, a suposed to be minor title in his filmography, a movie that he made by using the chance he had while he was waiting for his next kind of big movie The Green Inferno (2013) to get theater distribution, all the alarms went off. Because we as the thirsty audience were waiting for something fresh, some new twist in dark gory horror as we thought he would deliver. But this time the path is different. This time blood is not the main attraction, this time psychological tension is the name of the game.
Already very comfortably and productively settled with his new chilean gang (Knock Knock is starred by Roth’s chilean wife Lorenza Izzo and co-written by his fellow chilean director Nicolás López) this movie has a personality of its own. Besides the fact of being a remake of the 70s classic Death Game (1977), Knock Knock can take a long walk to the park by itself. The scene staging is superve as a middle age middle high class Keanu Reeves sees how his perfectly designed life goes to hell when he stays alone for a weekend since his wife and kids are gone out for a trip. A simple set up for a simple concept, but with cathastrophic consequences.
Great direction, great photography and great acting performances. The two intruder girls played by Lorenza Izzo and Ana de Armas are just great delivering a very explosive cocktail of erotism and danger that keeps you glued to your chair. And also impressive is the performace of Keanu Reeves, in the skin of the assault victim. Good old Keanu can sometimes act decently! Okay, maybe only sometimes. But hey, this is one of those times! So let’s enjoy it!
But don’t let this euphoric text to fool you. After all Knock Knock is a very simple divertimento. Doesn’t have huge pretentions and shouldn’t be taken as what it is not. This is a good exercise of love for cinema and thriller movies, holding hands with nowadays allieanation of the inhabitants of what it is suposed to be the first world and taken into the arms of sublime psychological horror. And I enjoyed it a lot, as I hope they enjoyed making it. As I wish all of you people can enjoy watching it. And everybody would be happy, at least for a while, until our deepest fears knock twice at our door dressed up as lost innocent deadly young ladies. And then hell breaks loose.
RATE: 7/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3605418
