Knock Knock
AKA: Bitches Be Crazy: The Motion Picture
Who can we contact to help Keanu Reeves quit smoking? Because I'm gonna need him to live forever. He gets a bad rap and it's a shame because he's got a presence I love and he's usually pretty canny about choosing his projects. He goes Full Cage here as a happily married husband and father who has a night of indiscretion that turns into a nightmare he may not survive.
He's alone for the weekend while his wife and kids are traveling, when two women (Lorenza Izzo & Ana de Armas) knock on the door asking to use his phone. They seduce him and he makes the terrible decision to sleep with them (after fending off their advances for a while), after which the shit hits the fan. They refuse to leave, they knock him out and tie him up, and the havoc they wreak escalates from there.
Reeves has been on a hot streak lately and here he goes mega in a way he doesn't often get to do (maybe Man of Tai Chi was pretty close), he's absolutely the reason to see it. That being said, maybe don't see it. This is the fifth movie from director Eli Roth, and he's still yet to make a movie I like without reservation (I haven't hated any of his movies, but hearing he's attached to a project doesn't exactly fill me with excitement). It seems like he wants to make some sort of statement about gender roles and infidelity here, but much like the social commentary in his other movies (particularly Hostel: Part II) he does not have the ability to make a statement without wallowing in what he's supposedly preaching against. The whole thing just takes on a misogynistic tone that left me uncomfortable, however not in the way Roth intended.
The movie is a tonal mess, trying to balance tension and comedy in a way that serves neither. For someone who fancies himself a master of horror, Roth shoehorns an awful (key word, that) lot of attempted comedy into his movies. What was quirky fun back in the Cabin Fever days has become grating and unpleasant, and it's a shame. I'm going to keep rooting for Roth and keep seeing what he does because he does appear to come from a place of true love for the genre, but it's getting more and more difficult to hope for the best. At least I can still cheer for Keanu.
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