Are scary movies at their scariest when they force audiences to confront what morality-bending temptations they may be capable of succumbing to, and what cruelties they may be capable of inflicting onto others? Eli Roth asks this question in his latest hostage-torture movie, Knock Knock, starring Keanu Reeves, Lorenza Izzo, and Ana De Armas.

Hot off of the director’s other most recent release, the Amazon jungle-set prisoner-torture movie The Green Inferno, Roth exchanges dismembering human bodies for the intricacies of dissecting human psychology, and the devastating, pain-inducing, consequences of acting upon seduction. Roth sexes up this midnight flick to a very smoldering degree with his pair of mysterious femme fetales, and while it attempts to provoke with interesting thoughts on the subjects of faithfulness and temptation, the result is a dull time on a lifeless effort.

Keanu Reeves plays Evan Webber, a work-from-home architect and family man whose wife and kids jaunt out of town to mom’s latest art showing (of all days, on Father’s Day weekend). Reeves as Evan lends his trademark calm, cool, and comically collected self to the role, even when we see his faintest frustrations of having last been intimate with his exhaustively busy wife. Reeves offers some so-bad-they’re-good line readings, including the use of a monster voice to scare off his children when interrupting “adult time,” perhaps hinting at the monster that lies in him (and all men?). All of this sets up the family leaving him alone with the family dog, a glass of wine, and rock music vinyl from his earlier DJ years, and the fateful pair of knocks that come from the door on a night of torrential rain.

‘Knock Knock’, like ‘Funny Games’ before it, offers the uneasy thrills of home invasion hostage, with the added attempt of a morally compelling story line to keep the thing moving forward.

Here, Evan is the placeholder for all of us, a surrogate character of a mildly unfulfilled person, who seems to hit a karmic jackpot in the arrival of two rain-soaked and scantily clad sexy strangers, Genesis (Lorenza Izzo) and Bel (Ana de Armas). Their cliche helplessness, lost on their way to a party with dead phones and sopping wet clothes, only trigger Evan’s nice-guy nature to bring them in and call them an Uber, en route from 45 minutes away. What follows is a cat and mouse effort led by the two bubbly young gals, poking, prodding, and all the while flirting with an ever-more uncomfortable Evan, who remains diligent and disciplined in not accepting their obvious advances–until, that is–he discovers the young ladies bare in his bathtub. Try as hard as he might, self-control loses out, and Evan and his new friends indulge in the unexpected but ultimately much-welcomed fantasy.

This is about as far as the titillation and urgency goes, until this first climax, of sorts. Even in Knock Knock‘s reveal, how Genesis and Bel turn out to be more than something of an inconvenience–at first only overstaying their welcome with fixing an absurd amount of breakfast, to which a regretful Evan drives them back to their supposed house in the harsh light of day–then returning the next night to invade his home, tie him up, and hold him hostage while they choose to torture a man who had innocently enough, fallen right into their trap of luring married men to their fates.

Knock Knock, like Funny Games before it, offers the uneasy thrills of home invasion hostage, with the added attempt of a morally compelling story line to keep the thing moving forward. Unfortunately, the result falls flat, as the second and third acts feel like mostly retread territory of the ground that had been laid before it. Keanu as Evan takes an interesting turn as the victim role, but his parody-ready acting here makes the whole thing an even more eye-rolling endeavor. Oddly enough, this seems to make Knock Knock more enjoyable–and for a movie that feels almost insufferable to stand, it is much-needed relief.

Knock Knock opens in theaters today.