This is a remake of Death Game 1977
Unfortunately, it would have been wiser to spend the money digitally remastering that movie then what we have here.
Which is a disaster.
When I read about this movie in 2015 with Reeves starring as the protaganst, my inital instinct was to stay away, my instincts were right. Unfortunately, my instincts were overcome by my discovery of Ana de Armas, after seeing her in War Dogs and Blind Alley, my desire to see more of her overcame my better instincts...WE do see for a few moments MORE of her so there is that...lol
Keanu Reeves is completely out of his element here. The scenes with his family are awkward and cringe inducing, it doesnt help the dialogue in the Family scenes are awful. I can applaud him for wanting to take on a different role. (he had to Executive Produce to get that role) I fully believe he took this role knowing that it was different then anything he had done, as in this movie hes not the strong hero, hes the weak victim, so fans of Reeves are going to hate how weak his character is as well as the original ending.
The dialogue in this movie is so bad. Reeves and Roths Girlfriend deliver them so badly, like I said before, "cringe inducing".
Eli Roth has lost his exploitative touch.
Im watching Death Game as I type this and while the camera work in the remake is MUCH better, and the shower scene is 10x better, the tension isnt there because Roth toned his movie down.
Death Game is a much better Exploitation movie during a pre-PC time when they did exploitation movies MUCH BETTER. The girls are much bigger psycho's, and they are a lot sexier as they do it! Roth in turns seems to be afraid to show much skin and had them overdressed after the threesome.
In Death Game they literally kill someone by beating his skull in! Collen Camp and SOndre Locke werent tiny little teenagers either, it was simply more believable they could overpower their victim together. They were also not shy and there is a dress up scene where they tease their tied up victim...ELi Roth had two sexy girls and only one of them played sexy psycho well enough. (HINT IT WASNT his GIRLFRIEND!) Also, Roth decides to have the one victim die "ambiguously", which lets the girls off the hook, so to speak, in what I think was a failed, secondary plot line to show they did this somewhat routinely and/or lead into the now defunct alternate ending. Either way it was a WEAK death scene.
Death Games shows the girls as true blue psychos while Knock-Knock gives of a more PG-13, misandry vibe, albeit with a much more memorable ending...I take that backI just saw it and in Death Games, the ending IS better, the girls get hit by an SPCA van right after they cut out, LMAO!!! Man, Death Game even did the camp better then Knock Knock!
Something tells me that "Alternate Ending" in Knock, Knock was supposed to be in the original movie, whether as the original ending(Doubtful) or as an End Credits Scene (more likely IMO.) It also shows the girls as bigger psycho's as you see them torturing another man, but now they have switched roles, clothing, hair etc. It also lets you know John Wick gets his revenge.
Instead Roth went with the Very Bad Things ending, except not funny, just horrifying. Too bad it took so long, and was such an uncomfortable and cringe inducing ride, just to get there.