Chile is steeling itself for the arrival of Keanu Reeves and Eli Roth, as the two descend on the South American country to film Roth’s latest, Knock Knock. (Roth has worked in Chile before: The Green Inferno was partially filmed there, and Roth starred in the Chilean disaster flick Aftermath.) The project is apparently coming together very quickly. Reeves signed on as star and executive producer only last week, and filming begins April 14 in Santiago. Roth says, “I feel I can have this movie ready for Toronto [in September] if I need to.”
Described as a psychosexual thriller in the vein of Roman Polanski and Paul Verhoeven, Knock Knock co-stars Cuban actress Ana de Armas and Chilean actress Lorena Izzo, who also starred in The Green Inferno. According to Deadline, Reeves plays “a happily married family man who’s left alone for the weekend. Two beautiful girls show up at his house, and turn his life upside down.”
Compare this to the plot of 1977’s Death Game, which is similarly about a family man, George Manning (Seymour Cassel), who is left alone for the weekend. George is surprised by the appearance of two attractive young women (Sondra Locke and Colleen Camp) at his doorstep, but lets them in anyway. The girls proceed to seduce George, torture him, and destroy his home—real “turn his life upside down” kind of stuff. While Roth has yet to comment on the similarities between the two films, in what seems like more than just a coincidence, Death Game star Colleen Camp has signed on as a producer of Knock Knock and was reportedly a “catalyst” for getting the film made.