A film that has been recommended in many of my circles and very recently by my co-host in my videos/podcasts, Knock Knock is a 2015 thriller directed by Eli Roth, starring Keanu Reeves. It is essentially a remake of the 1977 thriller, Death Game AKA The Seducers.
So, the plot is relatively simple. Reeves plays the role of a good-natured family man, who loves his wife and children a great deal. He’s made a good name for himself as an architect and former DJ and his wife is a sculptor who has recently gotten some acclaim for her pieces. The film starts with a little bit of love making between the two, but this never comes to fruition as the kids walk in to celebrate Father’s Day. However, on this day, we also have a weirdly placed trip to the beach where Reeves character decides to stay home because he has work to accomplish, to which he tells the kids, “If daddy doesn’t work, then we live in a box. You don’t want to live in a box, do you?”
In any case, the wife and kids leave, leaving him home alone in a thunderstorm. So what could possibly go wrong here, right? Guy’s blasting KISS and other rock classics while doing whatever it is he does on his computer. To many people who work at home, just another day at the office. In any case, there’s a knock at the door. What? Can’t use a doorbell? Weirdly, Reeves walks into the hall to ask “Who is it?” as if the person on the other side is gonna say anything. You usually wait until you’re at the door before asking that. Anyway, he opens the door to reveal the two girls that will make his life a living fucking hell. They’re actually very attractive girls (and I can say this, being the actresses were of age when this film was shot) and even though they lied about their ages (in the opposite way, which is bizarre and I’ll get to that later) the viewer knows better. Regardless, this is kind of odd that two rather attractive women that could very well be models will come to a man’s door complaining that they’re out in the cold rain with nowhere to go and were ready to go to a party. Now Reeves does feel sorry for the girls as they claim they’re cold and wet (but not before telling them once that he couldn’t help them and he could have left it at that, but I have some theories there which I’ll explain later) and he eventually decides to let them in.
At first, the girls are rather pleasant. He offers them hot tea and allows them to change into robes while he puts their wet clothes in the dryer. He also puts a wet phone into rice, which is supposed to be great for wet electronics. He calls a taxi, which is apparently going to be rather late due to the rain. The three of them chat and he provides a brief backstory on his wife, children and life. It is worth noting that they consider him part of the one percent in a single line here, which shows an ulterior motive that I don’t think many people caught and could be a big reason for what was done to his property later in the film. There’s more to this than most people realize and I could compare to the mentality of the anarchist rioters that we see in the modern era.
The mood starts to change between Reeves and the two girls as they claim they are flight attendants (which is later confirmed as a lie, I would personally wager escaped inmates from an insane asylum) but in all actuality are crafting a story in order to manipulate Reeves into having sex with them and cheating on his wife. They play up a million excuses, including the “we’re all animals, so what does it matter” old chestnut that you see utilized on social media about a million times over. The most disconcerting part of this is when you see the girls moving closer to Reeves as they try to put their hands on him, which he denies several times and keeps moving from seat to seat in the living room. He actually demonstrates his DJ skills for them and shows off his prized vinyl collection. This is an important part of the film, which has disastrous consequences later. However, one of the girls asks to use the bathroom, which relegates to her taking a shower. The taxi is almost there by this time and the other girl decided to check on her. With the taxi in route, Reeves than goes to the bathroom in order to let them know their ride has arrived. But he’s gone too far into the bathroom! No, you fool! And this is where they snag him like a spider with it’s prey. The two girls force him to have sex against his will and tell him to just enjoy the fellatio that they give him, which later turns into a full-on sex act. After this is over, the morning comes.
Alright, now here is where things get interesting. When Reeves wakes up, the two girls are making a literal mess of breakfast. Folks, it’s something that you would expect from children, not two grown ass women. They’re even trying to overfeed the dog, which leads me to believe they have some really big issues regarding their pasts that need to be worked out. Why would you be that stupid? He takes the dog and tells them to get out. Of course, this is where they pull the lie the tricks viewers throughout the entire movie. They claim to both be underage and Reeves doesn’t ask them for ID to prove it or anything. They just said that he would be on Catch A Predator and he’s now a pedophile. Again, this is a lie and part of their game. But believe me, it definitely can happen to any man who isn’t thinking with his big head. However, this is super rare. Most cases I’ve heard of involve a woman claiming to be far older than she is. A former bouncer told me that this is all too common in clubs. Many go in with fake ID’s and take advantage of much older men. This also happens in the heavy metal scene as well as other music scenes and especially with musicians. That being said, this is a bizarre change up. Usually, most of the women involved in this kind of thing would never tell the men they seduced that they were underage (if that was the case) but they would certainly tell the authorities. The best thing to do there is to simply ignore the temptation and ignore them. I recommend the waifu laifu, though it is not for everyone.
Finally, Reeves has had enough of it and eventually they have too. He tells them once more to get out of the house and they all go on a ride to an address that one of the girls give him. They jokingly ask if he wants to come out and meet their mother, which he denies, saying only, “Get out.” He then drives off, as the girls do not actually go into this residence, but head towards a playground and who knows where else. Seriously, there can be some major comparisons as to wherever in the hell these girls went and where Christ went from twelve to thirty in the Bible. No one really knows. But honestly, I think Reeves should have taken a Biblical cue and stranded them both in the middle of the desert.
In any case – and this is what I found bizarre – the girls actually came back. Why? I have no idea why. They broke into Reeves house, to which he heard the sound of a window being smashed. Then when he goes to check, one of the girls hits him over the head with a piece of pottery. When Reeves awakes, he finds himself tied to the bed as one of the girls comes out in his daughter’s clothes, even wearing her panties. Then she plays the role of a daughter having sex with her father in which she violently slaps him several times. After some other terrible things, he is filmed by one of the girls after being raped by the other. Then of course they really play this pedophile game where they tie him to a chair and put his daughter’s panties in his mouth. Again, the pedophile thing is a manipulation tactic. This is a major spoiler, but the girls are not underage. They are using that to manipulate him and break his spirit, which again is some deep state shit that doesn’t even sound believable for young women of this age. Or any age, rather. That kind of knowledge is a bit rare.
The rest of the film is Hard Candy-esque, but there’s a glaring issue. The viewer knows good and well that Reeves character is not a pedophile and this whole thing just feels like torture porn at that rate. It also includes defacing his wife’s artwork and family photos, destroying the whole house and the death of an innocent, asthmatic black man. He walks into the house in order to take one of the sculptures to present in an art show. The girls present themselves as relatives, which works for a while until the man sees that the sculpture has dicks and breasts drawn all over it and that causes the man to have an asthma attack. One of the incredibly resourceful and government trained girls is able to swipe his inhaler from his pocket without him knowing about it, even though the man was able to easily put the pieces together and realized that he was being grifted by the girls and that they’re just a bunch of old school hoes, which he learned from being born in Oakland. He runs to find Reeves who is tied up. Immediately, the girls start smashing up the sculpture to which the man runs from Reeves even though he’s warned that the girls are dangerous. He immediately has an asthma attack and the girls throw the inhaler back and forth to each other as he runs around between girls. It’s a game of “monkey in the middle.” However, the notable size of this character could have just tackled one of the girls even in an asthmatic state and would have definitely gotten the inhaler. It is weird that he went from girl to girl, especially considering his size. These are no longer frail girls at this point, they are dangerous terrorists and I’m sure the military would have put them down. So harming the girls in order to save the man’s life would not have been a bad move, since their game caused physical harm to an innocent man who had nothing on the line other than a threat to his life.
The girls completely destroy everything and even start breaking his vinyls, which is pretty horrific to see. They also cause massive property damage while stealing things from his home (now where have we seen that before? I recall a lot of stories where people have been destroying property and stealing things from businesses, especially small businesses which are now in ruins). There is also an unrealistic part of the film where Reeves is freed and puts his hands around the neck of one of the girls, as she stabs him in the chest with a fork. Though such a thing may be painful, I assume that in such an adrenaline charged event, Reeves would have barely felt the pain. The film also asks me to believe that a well-built man like Reeves can possibly be held down by an extremely thin and frail girl. This would not be true in real life, they would have probably both been knocked out.
The big scene in the film is when Reeves discovers they’re going to kill him, which causes him to break down and reveal what most of us had been thinking. They came to him, they seduced him, they broke into his house and they killed a man. He even took them to the address they asked for. They broke countless laws by coming into his home. What’s more, is they reveal an extremely dark secret that changed the whole film for me. In the beginning of the film, Reeves does a monster imitation for the kids and his wife which comes off pretty funny. The girls imitate this and it is then that both myself as the viewer and Reeves ask, “How did they know about that?” It is then obvious that the girls had been spying on him and his family for an untold amount of times which is voyeurism, especially if the girls had been watching sexual acts or acts of undress. We have no idea what kind of perverts these girls were, so that kind of voyeurism may include the fact that they were watching the kids. Once again, we have no idea what kind of mindset these girls had, but we can discern that it was not a healthy one and their depravity may know no bounds. Obviously, this is a character observation and bodes no relation to the lovely actresses playing in the film.
Additionally, you can tell this is a movie because of the amount of items being defaced, which would have taken quite a while to do. Seriously, there’s hours worth of destruction going on around this time and Reeves had a lot more time to fiddle with a phone than we thought, especially when he decides to call his wife just as they finish digging a regulation size hole. Don’t take this the wrong way, but this is very difficult to do for most people and these two girls would have definitely given up on it after awhile. We’re talking back breaking labor in the hot sun. I’ve dug holes before, it’s not fun. Especially a hole large enough to fit an adult human body and bury it – as well as the fact that the hole is just deep enough for him to fit comfortably. I can also tell that the dirt surrounding Reeves is not quite as deep as we may think. You can see his body moving around in it quite well. The dirt is not even packed on his body, he could crawl right out at any time. They bury him up to his head, making the big reveal that they were not actually going to kill him and the huge feminist moral (or at least the one that feminist use to justify this torture) which is namely, “Men shouldn’t cheat and no married man that we approach for our game ever says no.”
Well, maybe that’s because you spy on his family, come into his home unannounced, take advantage of his hospitality, tempt him with sexual pleasures, force him against his will into sex (which is rape), lie about being underage, make false accusations of rape and pedophilia, break into his home, destroy thousands of dollars worth of property, assault him, rape and film the rape, post it onto social media (which is a sex crime) and finally, kill innocent people who had nothing to do with your sadistic game, including an innocent, asthmatic black man. They don’t just need to be in jail, they need to be under the jail. All of these factors make any kind of moral credit that this film could provide irrelevant. Additionally, the only way that Reeves could escape from this would be to physically harm the girls, which would not be allowed in the film. He would have had to physically assault them in order for them to stop having sex with him, which is abuse, even though it would have stopped attempted rape. Even so, they may come back as they had been spying on him. As I said in the beginning, telling the girls no and shutting the door would not have stopped the problem. They would have still found a way to take advantage of him. What’s more, is the girls said that there was no one home in the entire area because they had been to every house. So this is more than just a game, it was a sadistic government operation. Think about it. No one in their right mind, especially of that age bracket is as skilled and resourceful as these girls are. These are military grade tactics in both the form of manipulation and strategy, developed over a long period of time with a great deal of trial and error involved.
Of course, all things considered, this is just a film. Unfortunately though, you will see bizarre incidents of violence like this from women towards men. It is understandably rare, but it certainly does happen. Assaults towards men by women have increased over the years, but no one wants to report on it. Men might be physically stronger and able to overpower women, but these events still occur and men must be vigilant. I’ve even heard of such situations where men were seduced to have sex with women against their will in the real world – it happens quite a bit, but people don’t talk about it. I cannot say that I recommend watching Knock Knock as a lot of critics place it in a “worst movie ever made” category, even though it might be a good cautionary tale for hookup culture aficionados who feel as though they are invincible and that nothing can ever happen to them. The experience was definitely traumatic and will make me even more cautious than I already am when it comes to the opposite sex. We have this false notion in society that women are incapable of harm and destruction, but that is where this film serves as a well needed wake-up call to the dangers of presumed innocence when it comes to a pretty girl. Some will destroy your life just as these girls did and the truth is often much stranger than fiction. It is safe to say that I was traumatized by the film and will never come back from what I’d seen here on display. Yes, they did try to end it with a joke and even Reeves went into overacting which came off a bit silly by the end of it and there was no resolution to the film, nothing was solved. We never saw what happened when his wife came home and saw her husband and what he had done, or was rather – forced to do by two demons that came in flashy packaging. Be very careful gentlemen, and keep your wits about you. Knock Knock might be just a film, but for some men the truth is often stranger than fiction.
FINAL SCORE:
