5.4 | / 10 |
Users | 2.5 | |
Reviewer | 1.5 | |
Overall | 2.2 |
Evan seems like the perfect guy. He's an architect, lives in a beautiful California home, has two kids and a lovely talented wife. One afternoon, the wife and kids go to the beach but Evan has to stay home and work. It's raining, he's alone, listening to music, and there's a knock at the door. Two beautiful young girls, are standing in the cold. They're drenched, lost and just want to come in to dry off and use the phone.
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Lorenza Izzo, Ana de Armas, Aaron Burns (V), Ignacia AllamandHorror | 100% |
Thriller | 45% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English, English SDH, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
UV digital copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (locked)
Movie | 1.5 | |
Video | 2.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.5 | |
Overall | 1.5 |
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 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'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.
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.
Unrated
2010
Unrated Collector's Edition
2007
2015
2008
2009
Warner Archive Collection
1962
Remastered | Collector's Edition
1990
Uncut
2013
2012
2012
2011
Unrated
2011
2012
2014
15th Anniversary Edition
2008
Eliza Graves
2014
2011
2013
Unrated Edition
2008
2018