Knock at the Cabin: Outlandish Apocalypse Tale is Middling Shyamalan

By Thom Ernst

Rating: B-minus

If you watch Knock at the Cabin anticipating M. Night Shyamalan's trademark 11th-hour reveal, you're likely to be disappointed.

The Shyamalan twist—those clever insertions that have us leafing back through the entire film to see what clues we missed—aren’t here. Well, they are, but not in the same 'gotcha' vein that ruled The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and The Visit. 

Abby Quinn, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Dave Bautista and Rupert Grint are Knock at the Cabin’s fatal four.

These are the movies that, despite involving otherworldly creations like superheroes, ghosts, or aliens, have an “aha” moment to make sense out of all that came before it.  So, powerful is this lure that even when Shyamalan misses his mark time and time again, (Lady in the Water, The Village, Old) the promise of a mind-bending, surprise ending keeps audiences returning.

Apropos of that, the theatre for the recent premiere screening of Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin was packed.

Knock at the Cabin is based on author Paul Tremblay’s book, The Cabin at the End of the World.  I can't say how closely Shyamalan follows the book. I haven't read it, but I suspect there are themes intended by the author that perform lighter in the film.

It is possible that by setting up the victims as a same-sex married couple, with an adopted child from a foreign country, is a way of normalizing a contemporary nuclear family. But the only purpose the scenario seems to serve is inciting a paranoia that the victimization of this young, happy family, is an act of a targeted hate crime. 

The premise of the film, clearly stated in trailers and previews, is that of a family, Wen (Kristen Cui), Daddy Eric (Jonathan Groff), and Daddy Andrew (Ben Aldridge) held captive by a quartet of threatening, but apologetic and otherwise common people. But since the quartet approach the cabin with their extreme makeshift hybrid weapons, Wen and her daddies have every right to fear for their lives.

Shyamalan tosses a wrench into expectations by introducing the four intruders as being mostly agreeable. The exception is Redmond (Rupert Grint) whose anger and impatience are monitored by Leonard (Dave Bautista) whose size and tattoos run in contrast to his gentleness.

Rounding out the four is a compassionate nurse named Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird) and Ardiane (Abby Quinn) a young mother.

The claim these four cabin intruders make, and it's an outlandish one, is that one of family members must be sacrificed at the hands of the others to prevent an apocalypse. Every time the trio refuses to comply, a deathly storm/plague/atrocity is released onto the earth.

The prophecies they spout are cryptic enough that, when revealed, they stand in as the film’s only twist.

Daddy Andrew, who has been the victim of a hate crime, rationalizes (sometimes convincingly) the coincidences between world affairs and the prophecies, insisting they are the targeted pawns of an involved scheme to cause them harm.

Some of the performances in the film are too stiff, and too “for the camera” to register as sincere. It hurts the film greatly. And the energy that might induce any kind of tension and foreboding gets lost in a back-and-forth banter derivative of a courtroom drama.

Each character introduces themselves, revealing their simple, every-person status, and then engages in a discussion of morality and responsibility—it’s 12 Angry Men and Lifeboat performed at an AA meeting.

 Whatever mystery is left for us to unravel is solely in questioning why these three (Erick, Andrew, and Wen) and why these four (Redman, Leonard, Sabrina, Ardianet) have been chosen to carry out the prophecy. And, for the hopeful cynic in the audience, there is the mystery as to whether there is an apocalypse to avoid or simply an elaborate scam.

Knock at the Cabin is not Shyamalan at his best (I put it below The Sixth Sense, The Visit, and The Happening --the latter an unpopular selection, I know). But for those keeping score, Knock at the Cabin does queue higher than The Village and Lady in the Water.

Knock at the Cabin doesn’t send you home with a clever epiphany that has you rethinking everything you just saw. What he gives you is an ending that you never have to think about again. And a film to match.

Knock at the Cabin is directed by M. Night Shyamalan, and stars Dave Bautista, Ben Aldridge, Rupert Grint, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Abby Quinn, Jonathan Groff, and Kristen Cui.  Knock at the Cabin opens February 3rd, 2023 at selected theatres.