The Ending Of Knock Knock Explained
Contains spoilers for "Knock Knock"
Based on the 1977 film "Death Game," "Knock Knock" is a disturbing, erotic thriller that follows Evan Webber (Keanu Reeves), a successful architect and family man whose wife and kids leave town for the weekend. This boring work weekend soon devolves into a debaucherous disaster when two young women, Bel (Ana de Armas) and Genesis (Lorenza Izzo), show up to seduce and torture Evan with a revenge rendezvous of epic proportions.
"Knock Knock" is directed by Eli Roth, notorious for making some of the most disturbing movies – often ones that include hard-to-watch scenes and "torture-porn" sequences. This film is no different, and Evan is subjected to everything from bondage and sexual assault to psychological mind games and imminent death. It's a nauseating nightmare containing highly explicit, vulgar, and offensive elements, and plenty of sickening sights even for those well-versed in horror.
By the film's conclusion, Evan has been through the wringer. His house has been trashed, his self-respect and integrity are in shambles, and his relationship with his family will soon be non-existent. While the girls leave Evan alive, they make sure that everyone will find out exactly what kind of man he is. But is there more to the ending than meets the eye? We take a look back at the ending of "Knock Knock."
What you need to remember about the plot of Knock Knock
"Knock Knock" lures you into a false sense of security with its warm and welcoming opening. We meet the Webbers, a stock-photo, picture-perfect family celebrating Father's Day. The patriarch, Evan Webber, seems to have it all: a gorgeous house, a loving family, and a solid career.
However, things take a drastic turn when Evan is left alone at the house for the weekend. When night falls, there's a strange knock at the door. Evan goes to answer, greeting Bel and Genesis. These two young women have somehow gotten themselves stranded in the rain, with no phones, and in a neighborhood they don't recognize. Out of courtesy, Evan invites them in to dry off and sort out their situation. However, a certain connection forms as he and the girls start talking. While he is initially resistant — thinking of his wife and family — he eventually gives in to temptation and sleeps with the two girls.
By the next morning, things appear to be spiraling out of control, and the girls are behaving in an increasingly erratic and unnerving manner — almost as if they are completely different people. They refuse to leave his house and threaten to falsely report him for sexual assault, claiming that they are minors. Though Evan is able to get them to leave for a brief time, they break back in, tie him up, and subject him to a traumatic night of physical and psychological torture.
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
What happened at the end of Knock Knock
By the film's end, it is assumed that Evan is a dead man. He tried his best to escape but fumbled practically every opportunity. He lost all of the girls' sadistic games, and every single one of his efforts to appeal to their humanity or sympathy was ignored. There is no reasoning with them, and they bury Evan in six feet of dirt with only his head exposed and a large stone hovering over him. Closing his eyes and waiting for the imminent skull cracking, the girls release the stone which purposely misses him by just an inch. Confused, Evan opens his eyes and is met by the girls telling him that they're not going to kill him but he's not getting away with it either.
Earlier in the night, Bel sexually assaulted Evan while wearing his young daughter's school uniform. The sadistic girls recorded this act and posted it to Evan's Facebook account with the caption "Celebrating Father's Day." While the sex wasn't consensual, you can't tell this from the video. As their final act of torture, the girls place the phone in the dirt in front of Evan, forcing him to watch in agony as the comments pour in, the views go up, and his entire life is destroyed before his eyes. Arguably, death would've been a more merciful end to his ordeal than this.
Who were the girls?
"Knock Knock" deliberately doesn't divulge too much information on who the girls are or where they come from. The names and backstories they give to Evan are likely fake, and not much is revealed about their identities or personal lives. One thing the audience can gather about them is that they're both extremely unstable and have likely suffered from some sort of trauma in their lives.
The way the girls behave perhaps gives some insight into what this trauma might be. Throughout the film, they not only act in a disturbing and violent manner but also adopt very child-like personas. They giggle like preteen girls and seem to have no regard for the consequences of their actions. They're reckless, impulsive, and stereotypically adolescent in nature.
One of the most offputting aspects of their behavior is their transference of fatherhood to Evan. The girls repeatedly refer to him as "Daddy" throughout the film, and when Bel assaults Evan she speaks to him as if he were her father — something we later learn has a particularly distressing motivation. While not confirmed, it is heavily implied that Bel — and possibly Genesis — were severely abused in some manner by an older man or father figure in their childhood. Now they're older, they exact revenge by finding and torturing older men.
If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.
Why did the girls choose Evan?
The girls seemingly show up out of nowhere, leaving us wondering why they came to Evan's house in the first place. This is answered at the end of the film when Evan is in the backyard screaming for his life. They tell Evan that no one is around to hear him, and they know this because they knocked on tons of doors before they got to Evan and no one was home. They didn't pick his house, it was just dumb luck that he was the first to actually answer.
Once they've met Evan, it becomes clear to them that he meets their criteria. He's an older, married man, and his family is out of town. However, meeting these requirements was not the final nail in Evan's coffin. These girls weren't just choosing random, innocent men to exact revenge on. They're choosing bad men and bad fathers who destroy their families in service of their self-serving desires. This heightens the relevance to the girls' personal trauma and makes the whole thing more cathartic for them.
If Evan hadn't slept with the girls in the beginning — cheating on his wife and betraying his family — they would've left him alone. Bel even says to Evan that she thought he was going to be the first, genuine man to turn them down, but no, he was weak and selfish, just like all the men who came before him.
Were the girls spying on Evan?
While the film suggests the girls were random in their approach to choosing Evan, there is also the slightly more sinister insinuation that he was chosen by them. At the beginning of the film, Evan plays around with his kids and uses a unique monster voice. This is done in a very lighthearted manner of course, but if you're going into this knowing it is a thriller, it is also somewhat ominous.
This comes back to haunt Evan later in the film when the girls torture him and use the same monster voice. This begs the question: Were the girls spying on him the whole time? The girls do appear to be more spur-of-the-moment sadists than covert surveillance specialists, but this would track with the fact the girls seek out married, family men.
Another possible — although less credible — theory is that they had help from Evan's wife. Perhaps she wanted to test her husband's loyalty and arranged the whole thing herself. However, based on what we see of her this would be completely out of character and she doesn't seem like the torturing type at all. Regardless of whether it was a setup or not, the fact remains that if Evan hadn't cheated, then none of this would've happened.
What's going to happen to Evan?
There are plenty of unresolved questions surrounding how Evan found himself in this precarious position, but ultimately what's done is done and the end is fairly conclusive on this. If it was a setup, or if it was just a series of unfortunate events, the ending remains the same. The video of Evan and Bel was posted to Facebook, and undoing the damage of this would be difficult. Even if Evan eventually manages to dig his way out and take the video down, too many people already saw it and it is not something you can easily unsee. You could make the argument that cancel culture is fleeting and people move on, but the vile video would've been seen by Evan's friends, family, and co-workers and that is something they're unlikely to forget.
If Evan did try to explain himself, how likely is it that people would even believe him? The idea of two young girls being able to overpower a grown man in his own home sounds farfetched. It would lead to questions of why anyone would do such a thing, and what their motivation could be. Also, any attempt to justify what happened will just sound like a desperate man fumbling to excuse his deplorable behavior. Any way you slice it, Evan's life as he knows it is over. He's likely to lose his wife, kids, friends, career, and reputation and there's absolutely nothing he can do about it.
What's going to happen to the girls?
The cynical truth of the ending of "Knock Knock" is that nothing is likely to happen to the girls. They made it very clear to Evan that he was not the first man to fall into their trap, and he won't be the last. They're going to keep ruining lives and inflicting torture until they finally find the one man who will say no to them, and prove that there are some good men out there. However, that hasn't happened yet, and the film gives the impression that the day isn't on the horizon.
For now, their twisted quest continues with countless casualties and collateral damage accrued — either until they find the elusive good man or they get caught. However, if they haven't been caught by now, they probably never will. This is one of the more unrealistic elements of the movie, because these are serious offenses, and the girls do little to no work to cover their tracks. In fact, their reckless, attention-seeking behavior makes it seem like they're trying to get caught.
One explanation for how they have evaded arrest for this long is that their crimes are going unreported. It could be that their victims haven't reported it to the police, because they feel humiliated or embarrassed by what has happened to them. It is the sort of thing that seems so outlandish that it would be unlikely to hold up under police scrutiny.
Was Evan a victim?
At the beginning of the film, Evan seems like the kind of person you root for: He's a family man and an all-around nice guy. He clearly makes a mistake when he cheats on his wife with the girls, but that doesn't necessarily justify the torture he endures as a result of this or the fact his life is torn apart by the end.
This is certainly how the movie frames Evan's character for the most part, but as things progress, this carefully curated image starts unraveling. At first, you see this in the dismissal of his actions. He admits he did a bad thing, but continuously denies that he is a bad man or a bad father. He shirks responsibility for what is happening to him and makes excuses. He was seduced, he was pressured, he was trapped ... the list goes on.
By the end of the film, Evan snaps and admits he did exactly what he wanted to do exclaiming, "It was FREE PIZZA! Free f****** pizza! It just shows up at my f****** door! What am I supposed to do?" The big twist of this film isn't that these girls are far more dangerous or sadistic than they look, it's that Evan isn't nearly as nice as he would have you believe. He may have been a target, but he was certainly not a victim.
What the ending of Knock Knock symbolizes
The core theme of "Knock Knock" revolves around the reverberating effect of trauma and the cyclical nature of abuse. It seems that Bel and Genesis were abused and taken advantage of as children, and now that trauma manifests in the violence they inflict upon others.
In the case of Evan, the damage he inflicts as a result of cheating will not stay compartmentalized but will create an irreconcilable rift that echoes throughout his entire family. His wife and children will be traumatized — not only by his betrayal — but through the public humiliation of the video. He committed one act of abuse, but the trauma is not localized. It is diffuse and evasive, spreading like a disease from one sick soul to the next.
There's also quite a lot of commentary here about the nature of men and women. It uses the initial image of Bel and Genesis as crazed, hysterical women as a red herring, distracting audiences from the true antagonist of the film, Evan. There seems to be a tongue-in-cheek message here regarding the "not all men" rebuttal, and the view of this film is that it really is all men.
Knock Knock's alternate ending
There was an alternate ending written and shot for "Knock Knock" that completely changes the resolutions for its characters. In the original ending, we see Bel and Genesis walk off, having gotten away with everything. To kick Evan while he's down, they also steal his dog. In the alternate ending, however, Evan is able to find the girls using a tracking device that was on the dog's collar.
Dressed in black, and with vengeance in his eyes, Evan approaches the house where the girls are. Inside, they're already torturing their newest play toy, but when they hear the knock at the door, they look up, startled. Just as Evan had at the beginning of the film, they answer with an uncertain, "Who's there?"
This ending did not make it to the final cut, but this makes a lot of sense, given that it somewhat contradicts the overall message of the film. It does fit with the never-ending cycle of trauma and revenge theme, but it also clashes with the positioning of Evan as the real antagonist. It could have potentially opened up the film for a possible sequel, but that also just feels unnecessary. The ending makes sense as it is, and in a way, the more cruel and cynical ending is in keeping with the tone of the film.
What Keanu Reeves has said about the ending
In an interview with Collider, Keanu Reeves said that practically nothing from the original script was changed during production, and for the most part, they shot it exactly how it was written. He also said that this was the correct course of action, and that includes abandoning the alternate ending. Again, this ending would've changed a lot of the messaging and symbolism, and Reeves gives the impression that he's a fan of the original message.
Reeves was able to empathize with the character to an extent and definitely sees the good-guy angle, just as the audience is initially meant to. However, speaking to ScreenRant, Reeves also highlighted Evan's frequent dismissal and denial of his wrongdoings as justification for wishing the character ill will and even taking amusement in his suffering at times. It appears as though Reeves is on board with the notion that Evan got what was coming to him. This is always how the film was meant to play out, and it seems like that worked out for the best. At least for now, the cycle ends here.