Lionsgate

An unrelentingly juvenile take on feminism that inexplicably manages to entertain, Knock Knock is mish-mash of B-horror, B-drama and, hopefully, intentional comedy from the same director who brought you '€œtorture-porn'€ mainstays, the Hostel series, films which involve a series of people, often women, being tortured and murdered for other people'€™s entertainment, and Cabin Fever.

The film's best parts mainly involve Keanu Reeves shouting lines such as '€œChocolate with SPRINKLES!'€ and '€œI'm a good guy!'€ while buried neck-deep in his own backyard.

Also this: '€œI'm an architect, so obviously I believe in things happening by your own design.'€

The ridiculousness of those lines and Roth's seeming-conviction in what he considers a pro-feminist showcase make Knock Knock easy to hate.

But the story's unrepentant dedication toward its own argument, and its distance from anything resembling reality, makes it perfect B-movie entertainment. If the film was released as a VHS-exclusive by an obscure studio in the 80s, a cult might have built up around it.

Well, maybe not. But the film is hard to ignore. At the very least, viewers will be unable to step away from engaging the cinema screens with yelps of '€œThat makes no sense!'€ or a simple '€œWhat?'€

The story revolves around Reeves' Evan Webber, an architect with two children, an attractive wife, nice rides and a beautifully designed yet comfortable home.

When he has to stay behind to work at home while his family leaves on a trip, he is confronted at night by two young ladies knocking at his door, drenched in rainwater.

A decent man with no underlying intentions, Evan offers them various kinds of help before eventually inviting them inside his house to wait for the Uber taxi he ordered.

You probably know where this is going. The two ladies (Roth's wife Lorenza Izzo and Ana De Armas) and Evan eventually have sex, with the host falling asleep only to wake up and find that his guests have not left.

Now they are aggressive young girls, making a mess of Evan's house and telling him they are underage. Things quickly turn from weird to frustrating to terrifying as the girls reveal their sadistic side.

Roth ramps up the mood changes very well, focusing on Evan's increasing bewilderment at what he has got himself into.

The camera work by Antonio Quercia is masterful, roaming around the house to give a sense of space while sprinkling it with the stalked sense of something scary afoot.

What Roth miscalculates, however, are key to the film's sense of dread. While the '€œinsane women terrorize'€ plot point works well, some insight into Evan's fall into infidelity would have pushed the audience to care about the fate of these characters.

There is an intriguing discussion buried in the film about the dynamics of sex and adult relationships. The film attempts to analyze the roles both sexes play within society. In Indonesia, a country that for the most part still hides behind the consideration that men are more sexually dependent and driven than women, this film might be of some interest.

Whether intentional or not, Roth's decision to make Evan, a decent person who repeatedly refuses the temptations of infidelity (slight-spoiler: he finally gives in), a victim of such violence, is curious for a film that ends up being a simple revenge flick.

Had Evan been a womanizer, Knock Knock's shtick of torturing those with lower morals would have been easier to digest. But Roth seemed to have wanted a deeper conversation about how far his subjects must stay morally aligned before deserving punishment. Finally, it seems, Roth decided that the story had to stay a simple '€œcrazy girls'€ piece.

Izzo and De Armas' characters are fleshed out well enough, though a little more information about what drives them would have raised the emotional stakes.

In a recent interview with the website AVClub, Roth spoke of how the story represented the effects of deteriorating communication in relationships, and that the film's psychopathic girls represented Evan's id, unconsciously building after years of resentment at the lack of sex with his wife and the fact that his children no longer see him as cool. That perspective, on what adult responsibilities do to a man's psyche, would have made for an interesting subject. Knock Knock, meanwhile, is just dumb and mindless fun.

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