KNOCK AT THE CABIN - A Review

Sure, they're zealots. But this lot is delusional and conflicted. That's enough to make them sympathetic, right?

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

It's no secret that M. Night Shyamalan's favorite subject is faith. Before The Sixth Sense established him as a household name he made two (largely forgotten) films that dealt with belief overtly, and the theme has surfaced to greater and lesser degrees throughout his career. He's tackled belief in the supernatural (Sixth Sense), in oneself (Unbreakable), in God (Signs), in your community (The Village), in his own storytelling abilities (Lady in the Water), etc. With very few exceptions, faith has been one of the guiding principle of his career, right up there with plot twists and horror tropes. Faith triumphs movie after movie. It feels compulsive, as if he's moved by a steadfast spirit designed to identify and exterminate doubt. This makes Knock at the Cabin a tricky one to dissect. Because in Shyamalan's latest, faith motivates the terror and doubt drives the tension.

The movie is based on Paul T. Tremblay's 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World. It had been on my to-read list for years now, so I read it over the weekend, knowing I wouldn't bother after seeing it adapted for the screen, no matter how good or bad. The setup for the book and movie are identical: A couple and their daughter are victims of a home invasion while vacationing deep in the woods. Their attackers are four strangers, each supposedly drawn to their cabin by the same vision, who insist that someone in the family must be sacrificed to prevent the apocalypse. The family must choose and do the executing, but the invaders will do everything in their power to keep them there until they decide. Things of course get ugly and nothing goes to plan. The novel is driven by uncertainty, leaving a great deal of what is going on to the reader's imagination. You're at the mercy of its adrenaline-addled characters, none of whom are fully convinced they are in the right. That is of course a tricky thing to translate to the screen, seeing and hearing being such subjective storytelling devices. Is Shyamalan up for the task? Sort of. Again, he can't help but lean pro-faith, and he trips over himself in an effort to balance the story. You can feel him struggling with the ambiguity throughout, especially if you know where his film diverges from the book. I won't be spoiling anything, but the ending will of course be divisive. Shyamalan is consistent in this way.

But even if it comes across as thematically shaky, some of Shyamalan's greatest talents are on display. The man knows how to use a space, and the blocking here is exquisite. A less confident filmmaker would insist the film explore every nook and cranny of the cabin, but we mostly stay put in the main space, characters largely stationary, chess pieces moved strategically by a skilled player. The camera may linger on an open door or a jar of grasshoppers here and there, but we spend most of the movie watching a game of chicken between dueling worldviews, the outside world and its problems transformed into a sort of Schrodinger's Cat. Shyamalan's cinematographers, Jarin Blaschke (The Lighthouse) and Lowell A. Meyer (Thunder Road) shot in 35mm with lenses from the 90s to get a dated horror look that sells the intense close-ups and establishes a sense of claustrophobia that never lets up.

The story moves along at a good click, and unlike its guests doesn't overstay its welcome. It could easily have become bogged down in ideological debates or anxious isolation. Flashbacks are layered in, sparingly and to great effect and only in service of our captive family - providing insights on Eric (Jonathon Groff, much less spitty than he was in Hamilton despite spending much of the film concussed) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge, who I only know from Fleabag, playing a character with an unfortunate name) and their 7-year-old daughter Wen (Kristen Cui). These flashes don't usually advance the plot, but give us some moments of beauty with them - singing in the car, taking their first (only?) swim at the lake - and that makes a world of difference in something this bleak. It's an economical but potent strategy. Whether the world will really end or not, we'd gladly let it to spare them.

The invaders tell us things about themselves, but introductions don't tend to matter once you've forced your way into someone's home. They are on a mission, and though they are conflicted, they are determined to see it through. They're later contextualized as the four horsemen of the apocalypse, and that's all you really need to know. Not that Nikki Amuka-Bird, Abby Quinn and Rupert Grint aren't doing all that much, they're just sort of a united zealot front and a steadfast desperation is the primary thing they need to get across. Dave Bautista is the exception. His Leonard is the most complex of the four, the group's messenger and its most loyal member, despite also being the most emotionally wrecked by it. Bautista counterbalances his massive physical presence with raw sensitivity and genuine sadness to be in this position (making Leonard all the more scary; there's no way to talk someone like that out of doing something). He's captivating in the role and it almost justifies the interviews he's done recently where he kind of belittled the Drax character he's played for years. I get it. If someone gave me the chance to really flex my acting chops through an entire movie, I too wouldn't want to ever spend half a day in a makeup chair again just to play a comic relief with a knife fetish. I like Guardians of the Galaxy, but it's the sort of restrictive role that leads to typecasting. Between his performance here and in Glass Onion I hope he's done enough to convince studios to trust him with leading, three-dimensional roles. Bautista is the greatest asset this movie has.

On a technical level, Knock at the Cabin works. As far as performances, it works. The story is where the most hang-ups will happen. It's going to be up to each viewer to decide if it works or not. I guess that's objectively true of all art, but faith creates baggage no matter your relationship with it. Ambiguity was the path of least resistance, but Shyamalan chose not to go that way. There's a perfectly fine thriller here, and then there's a complete mess of an ending. If this was made a decade earlier, it would have ended five minutes earlier and been all the better for it. Maybe The Village scared him off abrupt endings, but not only is it the most similar film to Knock at the Cabin, but it's the closest in quality. Do with that what you will. And make sure your next vacay spot has cell service.