Before Ana de Armas was a household name from her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in the NC-17 film Blonde, she made her debut in American film with Eli Roth’s psychosexual thriller Knock Knock, which also stars Lorenza Izzo (The Green Inferno, this year’s The Aviary) and Keanu Reeves. It’s a fascinating, often frustrating, and deeply uncomfortable movie with some challenging themes, and one that introduced the whole world to Izzo and de Armas’ great talents.
The Scary Movies That Set Up Knock Knock
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Knock Knock seems heavily influenced by the German film Funny Games, which was remade by its director in the United States as an equally nihilistic movie masterpiece. In Funny Games, two well-dressed but insane young men show up at a house in the countryside, where they terrorize, torture, and kill the family that let them in, never dropping their menacing good cheer. Knock Knock, however flips the genders.
Knock Knock, which is actually a remake of 1970s drama Death Game, features two beautiful women (de Armas and Izzo) showing up at their victim’s house. The victim is Evan, played by Reeves, who is an architect and former DJ who has a love of vinyl. He is married to an artist, and they have two happy children. The wife and kids are away for the weekend with just Evan alone in his house, working on a project. The doorbell rings, and it is all downhill after that.
It is raining out and two scantily clad young women show up at Evan’s house in the middle of the night, lost, looking for a party. They hit on him, but he ignores it and calls an Uber driver, who is 45 minutes away. The girls are overtly sexual and innocently ask if they can dry their clothes. After the clothes are dry, Evan approaches Genesis (Izzo) and Bel (de Armas) to return their clothes to them. The Uber driver is getting closer. To Evan’s surprise, he finds the women nude, and they seduce Evan, who at first resists but finally gives in. This fleeting moment of ecstasy will result in the relentless terror and destruction of Evan’s life as he knows it.
Watching Keanu’s Consequences in Knock Knock
In a scene later on in the film, Evan defends his actions by referring to the girls as ‘free pizza;’ he says that if you’re up late at night and someone delivers you a free pizza, you will probably eat it. Likewise, if two sexy young ladies show up at your house and seduce you, to him, it is inevitable that you will give in and enjoy a threesome with them. This is especially true with Evan, who had complained to his wife at the beginning of the film that they had not had sex in weeks.
After the seduction and three-way, they all go to sleep. When everyone wakes up the next morning, Evan demands that they leave, and it is only then that they begin to act in a hostile way. He finally drives them home, and we think the troubles are over… until they show up the next night, break in, tie up Evan and abuse him, and completely ruin the house and all the wife’s sculptures.
Evan doesn’t realize how much trouble he is in until the girls tell him that they are underage and that he is a pedophile. They threaten to turn him into the police, destroying his life and relationship with his family. They get nasty and the torture begins. Eli Roth’s previous film Hostel was about physical torture, while Knock Knock is about psychological torture (although there is some physical torture as well). They put speakers over his ears and quiz him about pedophilia and play deafening loud feedback into his eardrums when he doesn’t answer the questions. He screams in agony, saying that they are going to make him go deaf. This does not deter the girls at all, who proceed to torture and taunt him in simultaneously obnoxious, gruesome, and erotic ways.
What is the Point of Knock Knock?
What exactly is the message of Knock Knock? That all men are pigs? That Evan is a pig? That young, gorgeous, scantily clad women are impossible to resist? That, like in Spring Breakers, young women can be more psychopathic than we realize? Is this sexist, or feminist? Is it, like its title alludes to, just a sick joke? Knock knock, who’s there?
We learn a lot more about the two villains at the end of the film, when they tell Evan that they have done this before, and that in every case, the man was unable to resist the temptation and therefore the women destroyed these men and their families. We also learn that they had been spying on Evan and his family before they showed up at his door. And when a visitor shows up at night to secure the wife’s sculptures and ends up dead, they know who to call to have the body instantly picked up and disposed of - after they make a macabre sculpture out of his body.
In Roth’s Hostel, if you are traveling in an unknown place, you are the one in danger. You might get drugged and abducted, then tortured and murdered for the amusement of rich sadists. Knock Knock reverses this and has the trouble coming to your front door. Evan is not out partying in some strange country; he is securely at home when the trouble arrives in the form of two young gorgeous women, soaking wet and freezing, appearing to be very vulnerable, and he becomes the victim of a home invasion.
The Updated Meaning of Knock Knock
The ultimate question the movie asks is why, although it does pose other questions. Why do the girls do what they do? How many other victims have there been? Why are they on this crusade to punish married men with children in happy relationships? Why are they so angry? And why do they use their sexuality to control men?
Despite many unanswered questions, at the end of the film, we realize that Evan isn’t the true victim. It is his wife and two children, who return from their vacation to find proof of Evan’s infidelity, and she finds her precious sculptures completely destroyed, along with all of their framed family pictures. In a sense, the real point of Knock Knock is to hyperbolically depict consequences and the way that our loved ones are hurt by our actions.
Evan ends up in the backyard, buried up to his neck, watching footage of his infidelity that the girls filmed and then posted on his Facebook page. We see comments coming up, telling him he is sick and evil and that they are unfriending him. In this way it is a very modern, updated film, with Uber, iPads, and Facebook playing crucial parts.
Roth also directed a remake of Death Wish with Bruce Willis, and that remake too is remade for younger audiences whose lives revolve around social media and can’t picture the world without it. So although Knock Knock is a remake, the story is changed significantly to reflect our modern world.
Ana de Armas is the One Who Knocks
Ana de Armas gives a stand-out performance here. She is able to be both sexy and scary at the same time, and it is creepy when she dresses up in Evan’s daughter’s clothes and calls him “Daddy.” She begins as utterly charming and seductive before becoming downright bonkers, a menacing amoral woman barking like a dog and essentially raping Evan.
When she gets angry, you can see that there is a lot of rage within the character (especially with hints that she was sexually assaulted as a child), and she is much more than the bubbly airhead she immediately comes off across. In fact, she is a violent psychopath bent on using her sexuality to hurt others, a character who seems to be tapping into and subverting how women have been portrayed historically throughout cinema (de Armas even seems to be doing a pre-Blonde Marilyn Monroe impersonation at one point, mimicking the famous image of the bombshell blowing kisses, seen below).
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20th Century Fox
It’s always unclear just how much of de Armas’ character is performing, how much she actually is mentally insane and psychotic, versus how much she is bluffing or attempting to spook Evan. She seems to mock the historical representation of women in cinema (either as the ‘sexy’ woman or the ‘crazy’ woman), and her angry, unstable performance is brilliant; it’s no surprise that she has become such a popular actor lately. Ultimately, Knock Knock is a very tense erotic thriller and another great film from Eli Roth.
