'Knock At The Cabin' Review: M. Night Shyamalan Delivers A Taut BMovie
Knock Knock! Who's Here Well it's M. Night Shyamalan with Knock at the Cabin, another exciting film in theaters and in theaters now.
Ever since Shyamalan's film The Sixth Sense spawned the memorable "I see dead people" line, the director-turned-director has specialized in storytelling with an extremely simple catch designed to throw you off balance and waste your time . . His latest film, Knock on the Cabin, is based on Paul J. Tremblay's novel La Cabane du bout du monde and contains a disturbing premise: what would you sacrifice to save the world?
Launching on a quiet January, still fueled by the box-office success of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Knock in the Cabin takes the biggest risk - the end of the world - and reduces it to a microcosm. brutally intimate. Little boy Wen (Kristen Kui) is enjoying a retreat in a secluded cabin when a wild man in shirtsleeves (Dave Bautista) emerges from the woods with a chilling proposition. Wen and his adoptive parents Eric and Andrew (Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge) find themselves among a group of fanatics haunted by nightmarish visions.
Some films use this setup as a stepping stone to survival horror, in which a family is forced to defend themselves against alien invaders in heart-wrenching action sequences. But the story goes in a different, more striking and disturbing direction. The villains are both dark and apocalyptic, defiant with disturbing civility.
Dave Bautista stands out as the leader of a gang of shy sociopaths. It's a looming monolith, a physical nightmare whose ruthlessness is made all the more terrifying by its sensitivity. He's a lot scarier here than he was as the one-dimensional Bond villain in Spectre , and he builds on the poignant scene of hidden vulnerability we saw in Blade Runner 2049 .
Rupert Grint (former Harry Potter star of Shyamalan's recent Apple TV Plus series The Servant) is also great as a red hot, seething throat, adding a dose of fierce volatility to the mix. Nikki Amuka-Bird and Abby Quinn have smaller roles, but they add some heart and even a few laughs amid the mounting horror.
On the surface, The Knock at the Cabin is a depressing horror story that puts you in the shoes of a kidnapped family. From the flimsy open cabin doors to the moment Dad is trapped in his nightgown, the family is extremely vulnerable. First, the presence of a small child will make parents withdraw (especially after reading a book).
The menacing aspect of this story is heartbreaking, but Shyamalan seems to be holding back. As with Shyamalan's other recent works, the unsettling atmosphere is reminiscent of films like Legacies and Get Out. But he doesn't do the bad things that give these films a shocking intensity.
Likewise, the strict simplicity of the installation will not fill the entire time watching a movie. We get a series of flashbacks to Eric and Andrew's relationship that reveal their personalities and help you connect with them. But the flashback is perhaps the most uncomfortable part of the film. While it's exciting to see two people fall in love and support each other through their problems, it's not always interesting (or at least not as interesting as trying to escape ruthless eccentrics in a cabin). This backdrop makes for an intriguing and complex twist, but one that never unfolds because the characters involved fade from the story too quickly.
Light and economical, "Knock on the Cabin" gives us enough space to reflect on the deeper global issues raised by its desperate dilemma. It confronts the reality that the world is going to hell and our power to stop it. And unlike the preachy tone of Adam McKay's apocalyptic satire Don't Look Up , Shyamalan's film conveys in a more subtle way the responsibility each of us has for the future of our planet. Ultimately, that is the predicament we are left with: What sacrifices must our generation make so that our children have a world in which to live?
And of course we expected The Sixth Sense to have an unexpected ending. Shyamalan's last film, Beach Buddy The Old One, broke from the genre with an all-too-literal ending that explained everything. Wisely, Knock at the Cabin leaves things more ambiguous.
It's amazing how M. Night Shyamalan keeps creating suspenseful, disturbing B movies with big ideas. Knock on the Cabin may not be as outlandish as those horror stories, but Shyamalan's film is always there when it matters most.
