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MovieMeditation presents...
HIS FILM DIARY 2015
total movie count ........... viewing day count
277 .......................... 328

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November 25th

—— 2015 ——
KNOCK KNOCK
—— horror ——



The best bad taste I've ever had in my mouth
during an entire movie…


Knock, Knock. Who’s there? Two smoking hot, soaking wet girls in next to no clothes wanting to get in Keanu Reeves' house. What does he do? Let them in, of course, that horny bastard. What happens next? Well, one of the trashiest black comedies I have seen, and surpsingly, enjoyed as well. Usually, combining comedy and horror can often result in cinematic catastrophes that fail to find the right kind of balance between the two and I guess it is generally a subjective opinion whether you want it darker, lighter, twisted or just terrifying. Whatever Eli Roth came up with here though, I liked, for some extremely odd reason, which sometimes makes me sit in the dark and reconsider my status as a serious cinephile…

Actually, I lied about the above, because I never ponder myself about my preferences in cinema. If you consider yourself a proper cinephile you either love, like or at least admire every single corner of it and never cry in shame when you realize you liked something, which isn’t widely praised. ‘Knock, Knock’ isn’t a great movie – it is a trashy film, full of plot holes, far-fetched actions and questionable going on atrocious acting – and you know what? I love it for it. The movie is endlessly quotable and the questionable acting is quasi-comedy at its finest, with a well-prepared Keanu Reeves delivering the best Nicolas Cage performance not delivered by Nicolas Cage.

The film falters at times, but the comedy elements are mostly consistent throughout and kept at just the right distance, so that it feels determined enough to be deliberately amusing, but still gruesome enough as the genre film it wants to be – both in terms of its homage to the originator, ‘Death Game’ of 1977, and when it comes to the grisly, offensive, obsessive and obnoxious cinematic cruelties – perfectly cut out in thin cardboard material, which you only need to knock on twice to tip over, but still looks surprisingly solid when you just look at it from a distance.

‘Knock Knock’ is no movie of art nor does it want to be – something that is both visually obvious with all the actual art being destroyed in this film, going from sculptures to vinyl records, but also just as a product in and on itself. Whether you like Eli Roth as the joker who plays all the cards, may also decide whether you want to see him play a royal flush or simply flush him out in the toilet as fast as possible. I must say I kind of want to flush him out, but at the same time, I kind of enjoy standing there and watch him disappear, because admittedly, at least he does make some fascinating sh*t…




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