KNOCK AT THE CABIN

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B

I haven’t gone to a new M. Night Shyamalan movie in seventeen years. I got tired of how dumb they were. He’s had a kind of renaissance over the past half-decade or so, however, albeit with decidedly mixed reactions, but on average with an upswing. I finally decided to give him another chance with Knock at the Cabin. This is my report of how that went.

It was fine. Is this movie compelling? Sure. Is it suspenseful? Occasionally. Is it terrifying? Not really. Does it make sense? Get real.

To be honest, I kept waiting for the signature “Shyamalan twist,” and—spoiler alert—this movie really has no such thing. I thought there would be something revealed about the four intruders who force themselves into the titular cabin, or some unexpectedly clever way the gay couple with an adopted child staying there would get the better of them. In the end, everything going on, or being claimed, turns out to be legit, which just left me wondering: why? Knock at the Cabin is a surprisingly earnest story, in its way even endorsing divine judgment. If there is any twist, I suppose, it’s that neither the movie nor any of the main characters in it pass judgment on this family comprised of two dads and a daughter.

I will admit this was a particular detail that caught my attention: the protagonists are a gay couple, Eric and Andrew (Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge). If this were the same story except they were a straight couple, I would have been less interested. The makeup of this family does prove to be a salient plot point, particularly the specific love of a chosen family, including a child—all of them part of marginalized communities.

The depiction of Andrew’s backstory as a gay man is a little heavy handed. We see several flashbacks of their relationship, including a physical assault at a bar and Andrew’s subsequent purchase of Chekov’s Gay Gun. His demeanor telegraphs “barely short of unhinged” when he’s purchasing this gun, and you’d like maybe someone at the gun store would express some concern. Then again, this is America, after all. In any case, there are elements of direction here that smack of a straight man telling a gay story, the actors themselves being gay notwithstading—although that fact does not go unnoticed, nor unappreciated.

The script, co-written by Shyamalan with Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman, is based on a 2018 novel by Paul Tremblay, with the far better title The Cabin at the End of the World. The film makes several very key changes, but the protagonists being a gay couple with an adopted child named Wen is not one of them. Strangely, the way the novel ends is something the film could have easily retained, and would have been better for it, when it comes to the choice the intruders insist this family must make.

The four intruders are led by a large man named Leonard (Paul Bautista), who is accompanied by a nurse named Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird); a chef named Ardiane (Abby Quinn); and a guy named Redmond who Andrew is increasingly convinced was the guy who once assaulted him. Redmond is played in a surprisingly short role by Rupert Grint, here using an American accent. The whole group, after forcing their way inside the cabin, insists they must sacrifice one of their own, and then be willingly killed by one of the other three, in order to prevent the apocalypse.

How or why this is the case, Shyamalan evidently has no interest in exploring. Andrew and Eric both ask questions to this effect, and never get straight answers. They just say no to the question “Will you make a choice” each time it’s asked, and then Leonard turns on the news to show them the latest travesty or global disaster. A giant tsunami at Oregon’s Cannon Beach was a particularly fun one. There are really just three different “judgments” (or plagues, or whatever they want to call it) shown, always in news telecasts. These are by far the most interesting parts of the film, and although I appreciate the impulse to use them sparingly, I wished there were more of it.

The crux of the story, it turns out, is whether this family will make the choice demanded of them, and if so, how they will approach it. This is specifically where the film significantly deviates from the source material, in ways that do nothing to enhance the story. I was fully engaged the whole way through, but in a way that had a curious lack of urgency given the apparent stakes. Knock at the Cabin is the kind of movie that makes me grateful for my monthly AMC subscription: entertaining but relatively forgettable, worth seeing so long as it hasn’t cost anything extra.

It’s not quite as horrifying as they’re trying to make it look.

Overall: B-