Reeves ill-fit for this remake
MEN are pigs! Women are psychos! Onepercenters have it coming! Pick your moral in this nasty, singlesetting thriller that’s ultimately quite tame by the standards of torture-porn director Eli Roth (“The Green Inferno”).
Keanu Reeves stars as Evan, an architect working at home while his artist wife (Ignacia Allamand) and kids are vacationing. The titular rap on the door comes from two scantily clad women (Lorenza Izzo, Ana de Armas) drenched from the rain and claiming to be lost — but who, soon enough, get Evan to show off his DJing skills and let them dry their wet clothes while they wait for an Uber.
The car comes and goes, as do Evan’s protestations against the women’s overtures, and he wakes to find he’s gotten more than the illicit night he bargained for.
Roth is remaking the 1977 exploitation flick “Death Game,” and though his ver- sion is taut and brisk, its plot — a regular schmuck trapped in the house with two unhinged captors — feels overly familiar.
Plus, Reeves is the wrong man for this job. His torment by Genesis (Izzo) and Bel (de Armas) eventually sees him screaming “You crazy bitches!” like some descendant of the mouth-frothing truck driver in “Thelma and Louise.” And Reeves just isn’t that guy; he’s the king of lowkey Zen, even when he’s dealing out revenge (as in “John Wick”).
Besides, there’s no satisfying vengeance to be had here. Evan doesn’t ever seem cocky enough to earn the karmic payback he gets, and Genesis and Bel’s abuse of him feels like some twisted spin on female separatism — one that, unsurprisingly, involves tiny outfits and lots of (straight) sex. “Knock Knock” is not without its campy pleasures — it’s just so unpleasant while it’s doling them out.