Post by desantis+mwilcox@♫.ws

Chile / South American production and thematic backdrop

Knock Knock was filmed in Chile (primarily Santiago and Chicureo), with Roth explicitly preferring the local production environment. The same collaborative circle produced The Green Inferno, which places American characters in a South American jungle setting involving indigenous groups and extreme violence. The Shape of Water’s amphibious creature originates from the Amazon—another South American aquatic “other” captured and studied in a laboratory.

Documented patterns of sex trafficking and sexual exploitation in Chile and the broader region (including networks involving Venezuelan, Colombian, Paraguayan and other migrant women, and later groups such as Tren de Aragua) form a real-world regional context of women being moved, controlled, and commodified. This sits alongside stories in which young women appear as seductive or predatory figures (Knock Knock) or in which a working-class woman finds agency and connection outside conventional human society (The Shape of Water).