Movie Review : Knock at the Cabin (2023)
Infamous Indian-American film director M. Night Shyamalan has been enjoying a healthy round of revisionist history in recent years. Formerly knows as the-insane-plot-twist-guy, Shyamalan powered through critics and haters and just found ways to get all his weird, silly little films produced until people became all right with them. Knock at the Cabin isn't one of these. It's an adaptation from a Paul Tremblay novel, a legit horror author, and it's both gorgeous, smart and weirdly flat for what it is (or supposed to be).
Knock at the Cabin tells the story of Eric (Jonathan Groff), Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and their daughter Wen (Kristen Cui), the victims of a strange home invasion during their vacation in the woods. The four people who break in and enter their cabin tie them up, but subsequently request that they sacrifice a member of their family to prevent the apocalypse and they will commit ritual sacrifice one by one until they make their choice. Unbelievable premise. Impossible choice and yet the world seems to be ending indeed.
Beyond the boring-ass choice
I’m sure the Paul Tremblay novel The Cabin at the End of the World is great. I’ve read the synopsis and it’s ridiculously darker. The movie doesn’t QUITE work, but it almost does. I fucking hate the you-have-to-save-the-planet stakes that Marvel movies have been running into the ground for fifteen years. If everything is at stake, nothing is. There's no reason for conflict and everyone should act accordingly. It's not quite what's happening here, but the apocalyptic threat still kind of feels empty?
Everything else is fine. The delivery is a little underplayed and Shyamalan bets hard on the eeriness of the encounter to make it work and it sometimes does. There's a great scene where Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird) is wrapping Eric's head in gauze after the home invasion, where she's bathed in light from the outside while Eric’s shrouded in darkness, as if she was enlightened with the truth. That's a nice detail that foreshadows the driving conflict of the movie : what is more important? What is or what you feel?
Because that is the driving conflict that makes everything interested and why this movie is relevant: do you really care about what’s actually happening or do you actually care about how you feel about what's happening? Can you sacrifice something you care about in order to make the world a little better? This conflict is widely unexplored in the movie and Eric and Andrew just end up doing what home invaders tell them to, but it is theoretically interesting right? What can two tied-up, outnumbered guys even do?
Not going to spoil you the novel, but it goes in a whole other, more interesting direction. It's worth checking out.
The Wrestler 2: In The Woods with Dorky Clothes On
I should be nastier than I am to Knock at the Cabin, but I can't. While it frustratingly doesn't amount to shit, it's full of little interesting choice. Dave Bautista kind of works as the creepy giant stranger dude. He doesn't have a great range, but he's got that dorky, uncomfortable energy that makes Leonard work as a character. He feels genuinely contrite about what he's doing. Rupert Grint is terrible, but his character was unnecessary and related to a subplot from the novel that could've been cut out.
Knock at the Cabin has cool tense and original scenes too, like the one where Leonard gets locked in the bathroom in a reversal of fortunes. M. Night Shyamalan was always great at creating tension. When he's not good at it resolving it in an interesting way. Leonard's death (he's, by far, the most interesting character in this movie) is also well executed and foreboding. This is why it's so difficult to have a cohesive opinion about Knock at the Cabin. So many scenes made me pay attention, but so many made me drift off.
*
Should you watch Knock at the Cabin? If you're student of good storytelling, you definitely should because it's flawed in interesting ways, but otherwise I'd say no? A tentative no, but it's just full of empty promises. I appreciate the sense of dread it carried through, but it ended up in a way too predictable place. M. Night Shyamalan is still not out of my doghouse, man. He's a shitposter extraordinaire now, that's what he does. He slaps together things that look good, but ring hollow.
