Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		2.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		1.5

Knock Knock Blu-ray Movie Review

Don't answer.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 3, 2017

You can meet the most interesting people under the most unlikely of circumstances sometimes. I attended a classical choral concert with my wife some time ago and we were seated next to a rather friendly couple who immediately struck up a conversation with us. The gentleman of the couple seemed intrigued by my interests in both music and film, and he was especially interested in my work for this very site. He first talked about his immense digital music collection which was so huge he had his own private server to handle everything ("Do you have your own server?" his wife asked after I shared I had a large music collection myself), but then we got into a frankly fascinating but kind of bizarre conversation where he started talking about a recent Writers Guild ruling (if I'm recalling the specifics correctly, which I admittedly may not be) which had given him a story credit on Knock Knock, since it was determined it had been a remake of a long ago and largely forgotten opus which he had written, a film entitled Death Game. Weirdly, I had just seen Knock Knock’s director, the ubiquitous Eli Roth, on Comedy Central’s @ Midnight “fake game show”, where he was a contestant and was hawking the film (actually joking that it was a remake—of Weekend at Bernie's), so it seemed like a rather peculiar piece of synchronicity falling into my lap. I have yet to see Death Game, but it would be difficult to imagine it being any more ham fisted than this occasionally goofy but ultimately ineffective horror opus, one which has a typically Rothian combination of gore and (black) comedy. Lionsgate never sent a screener when this Blu-ray was first released some time ago, something that typically indicates even the studio knows it has a turkey on its hands, but now (i.e., as this review is being published) with it being significantly discounted at Amazon it jumped up to the top of my review queue's sales listings, so I thought I might visit it for those considering a purchase.

Knock Knock’s provocative plot mechanics rest upon a couple of conceits that have to be accepted at face value in order for things to make whatever sense they do (which, frankly, isn’t much). Evan Webber (Keanu Reeves) is a seemingly successful and happily married architect who is nonetheless nursing some pain from a recent injury and who seems to be at least a little psychologically roiled about the onset of “middle age”. His artist wife Karen (Ignacia Allamand) takes off with the kids for a little mini-vacation, leaving Evan at home over Father’s Day weekend.

If the opening sequences of the film hadn’t posited Evan’s home life as seemingly idyllic, what happens next might have had at least a little more believability. On an uncharacteristically stormy and rainy Los Angeles night, two winsome young women named Genesis (Lorenza Izza) and Bel (Ana de Armas) show up drenched at Evan’s door, claiming they’re lost, without usable cell phones and with no way to know the actual address they’re looking for without access to a computer. That gambit eventually gains them entré into Evan’s rather luxe home, at which point all hell breaks loose.

It turns out that the two girls are at the very least troubled and quite possibly sociopaths (if not outright psychopaths) and they first toy with Evan in a number of ways before seducing him into a three way, something Evan only gives passing lip service (so to speak) to preventing. It’s all ludicrous, especially given the emotional ambience depicted in the film’s opening scenes with Evan and his family, and that ridiculousness only increases (probably intentionally, it must be afforded), with the two wreaking havoc throughout Evan’s ordered life. The action (again, so to speak) becomes more and more graphic, with an element of torture thrown in, apparently just for good measure.

There’s an interesting concept lurking beneath the shiny surface of Knock Knock, but Roth simply doesn’t set up the situation well enough to let things have any real impact. It’s a series of occasionally titillating vignettes that are stylish but empty, kind of like the modern art that adorns Evan’s house. I will say that the weirdness of this film has made me eager to try to track down Death Game, just to see what it’s like.

Knock Knock Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Knock Knock is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The IMDb lists the Canon EOS- 1D C as the camera utilized on this shoot, and not having seen a lot of films which utilized this particular technology I can't state authoritatively whether some of the truly odd anomalies seen in this transfer are source related or the product of compression with pretty variable quality. Large swaths of this presentation look very good to downright excellent, with a good accounting of an often quite warm and vivid palette, as well as nice detail levels. But there are some really weird looking artifacts here that are almost like a hybrid of banding, macroblocking and at times a weird scrim like overlay that resembles pixellation. I first noticed it on Reeves' forehead in the opening scene in Evan's bedroom, but there are a number of moments where some prevalent issues occur. Look at Ana de Armas' legs when she's standing over Evan's body on the bed (in her schoolgirl outfit), and, later, at the floor as the camera pans past Evan tied up as a hostage for just two of several examples. Some may feel a 2.5 score is too harsh given the generally very good presentation here, but the defects are so pronounced and noticeable that I'm personally hesitant to up the score lest it give some prospective consumers undue expectations.

Knock Knock Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Knock Knock's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix doesn't have any of the issues the video presentation does, though a couple of moments sound weirdly muffled in terms of dialogue. One of the plot's conceits is Evan's large album collection and his state of the art phonograph system, and so music provides some of the best surround activity in the film. The boisterous antics of the girls also provide at least occasional opportunities for discretely placed effects. Dialogue is rendered generally clearly save for the aforementioned (brief) tamped down moments.

Knock Knock Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Eli Roth, Lorenzo Izzo, Nicolas Lopez and Colleen Camp


• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 4:51) feature optional commentary by Eli Roth.


• The Art of Destruction: The Making of Knock Knock (1080p; 14:42) is a standard issue EPK with some decent interviews, especially with Roth, who discusses having discovered Death Game back in the day and having loved it.


• Still Gallery (1080p)

Knock Knock Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

All I can say is hopefully some future concert attendee will sit next to me and explain what went wrong with both Knock Knock as a film and the peculiar video anomalies on display in this Blu-ray release. Even diehard Reeves and/or Roth fans may find it hard to find much to appreciate here.