14. Knock Knock

Director: Eli Roth

Release date: October 9, 2015

The most widely misread film of 2015 was Eli Roth’s delicious black comedy Knock Knock.

Keanu Reeves plays Evan Webber, an architect and family man, whose two kids and wife leave him alone for a weekend. A storm brews outside his large modern Los Angeles home while he sits inside, smokes a little pot and works on a building project. His doorbell heralds the arrival of two young, big-eyed beauties, who are wringing wet and lost on their way to a party.

With all the chivalry he can muster, Webber invites them in, offers them a robe and calls them an uber. A dialogue-driven dance begins in which the two girls use every trick in the book to seduce their host.

It’s likely male and female viewers will each have separate responses to Knock Knock. To heterosexual males it’s a conundrum (“Would I have given in? Would I have fallen for the trap?”). Women might want to believe their partners would have survived with their fidelity intact (“Do you really believe that?”). Other viewers may have a problem with the depiction of the two malevolent female antagonists (“Are they meant to represent all young millennial females?”).

Stepping away from the “torture porn” that Roth is largely credited for kickstarting with his Hostel franchise, the director is at his most precocious in Knock Knock. You can practically hear him cackling behind the camera. But, keep in mind, these two women are fictional creations, each an exaggerated device designed to personify the consequences of infidelity. Furthermore, they represent the public trials of the internet era, where judgements are handed down through the court of social media.

As the destruction of Webber’s world unfolds, and the constructed veneer that society has placed on him is broken down, Roth’s wicked message presents itself: in the digital age, the nuances of a crime bear no relevance.