KNOCK AT THE CABIN (2023)

Studio: Universal Pictures
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Writer: M. Night Shyamalan, Steve Desmond, Michael Sherman
Producer: M. Night Shyamalan, Marc Bienstock, Ashwin Rajan
Stars:    Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Kristen Cui, Abby Quinn, Rupert Grint

Review Score:

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Summary:

Four strangers hold a small family captive to present them with an impossible choice: willingly kill one of their own or allow the apocalypse to destroy humanity.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Armed with weaponized gardening tools, Leonard, Sabrina, Adriane, and Redmond come to a remote woodland cabin where gay couple Andrew and Eric are staying with their adopted daughter Wen. Although Leonard initially befriends Wen while she is alone outside, she and her fathers soon come to perceive the four strangers as a threat. After calm negotiations fail, Leonard and his companions break into the cabin. The two men fight back, but are still taken captive. Andrew injures his leg and Eric suffers a concussion during the melee.

Aware that what he has to say will be difficult to believe, Leonard explains that he, Sabrina, Adriane, and Redmond shared a terrifying vision that brought them together, pointed them toward the cabin, and showed them the end of the world. Leonard claims that in order to stop the apocalypse, one of the three family members has to willingly kill one of their own. No one can commit suicide and the four strangers cannot act for them.

After Andrew and Eric dismiss the intruders as delusional, Redmond puts on a hood and kneels in fright over what is about to happen. The other three strangers then kill him suddenly.

Leonard claims Redmond’s death unleashed a plague. To prove he is telling the truth, Leonard turns on a TV news bulletin that reports on earthquakes causing devastating tsunamis. Sabrina and Adriane recognize the footage as mirroring their visions.

Leonard gives Andrew and Eric an evening to consider the situation and make a choice. The next morning, Andrew continues contending that the strangers must belong to a suicidal doomsday cult staging a scam with prerecorded news footage because he believes he recognized Redmond as a bigot who once violently assaulted him in a bar.

Adriane tells Andrew and Eric she is next in line to be killed and nothing can be stopped until the men make a choice. Leonard and Sabrina subsequently kill Adriane just like Redmond. Claiming Adriane’s death unleashed a second plague, Leonard turns on a news report about a deadly virus spreading worldwide.

Although Andrew remains steadfast in his belief that what the strangers claim isn’t real, Eric admits he saw a figure reflected in light when Redmond was killed. Andrew dismisses Eric’s changing conviction as being due to his concussion.

Wen creates a distraction during which both men escape from their rope bindings. Andrew recovers a gun that he eventually uses to shoot Sabrina after she rushes at him. Leonard ultimately wrestles the weapon away from Andrew.

Andrew finds Redmond’s driver’s license, which proves he was really a man named Rory who previously assaulted Andrew. Leonard counters that who they are doesn’t matter and none of them know why they were chosen for their tasks.

Still starting to suspect Leonard could be telling the truth, Eric turns on a news bulletin that reports on planes suddenly crashing around the globe without warning. Leonard begins accurately predicting what the reporter will say next. Andrew breaks the TV in growing frustration, although Eric tells him everything that is happening cannot be a coincidence.

Leonard asks Andrew and Eric to follow him outside for “the last part.” Leonard warns that after he is gone, Andrew and Eric will only have minutes before it is “too late.” Leonard then slits his throat. A storm immediately forms in the sky.

Andrew and Eric confront each other with their conflicting beliefs about what is really happening. Eric identifies how the strangers each corresponded to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as he gradually convinces Andrew to shoot him, which Andrew finally does. After Eric’s death, the storm subsides.

Andrew recovers Wen from her hiding spot in a treehouse as a lightning strike destroys the cabin with fire. Using the vehicle that the strangers took to get to the cabin, Andrew and Wen drive to a diner where another TV bulletin reports on people surviving the abated catastrophes. By going through their belongings, Andrew verifies the strangers really were who they said they were. Andrew and Wen go back on the road together.

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Review:

The perceived marketing value of M. Night Shyamalan’s name has ebbed and flowed with his commercial successes and critical failures over the course of his career.  Following Shyamalan’s breakout hit “The Sixth Sense” in 1999, few filmmakers were hotter in Hollywood.  During a disappointing string of lesser titles that included “Lady in the Water,” however, Shyamalan bounced between studios while his involvement as director took second billing to big IPs like “The Last Airbender” or marquee stars like Will Smith in “After Earth.”

With “Knock at the Cabin,” Shyamalan evidently enjoys the good graces of PR people once again because someone decided they could take the far better title of author Paul Tremblay’s source novel “Cabin at the End of the World” and swap it with something more generic, less informative for the film adaptation.  This tells us those PR people had renewed confidence that prominently attaching “M. Night Shyamalan” to any title, no matter how mundane, would do most of the talking to sell the movie instead.

As well it should.  Since steadying himself with “The Visit” (review here) in 2015, Shyamalan went back to the basics of what made him a household name in the first place.  He then rebuilt his reputation with a series of modest thrillers that strip out blockbuster bloat to focus on simple storytelling.  “Knock at the Cabin” continues that approach of delivering signature Shyamalan style by doing what any suspense-intensive chamber drama must to keep invested eyes glued to the screen: use engaging performances to draw out the tight tension of a ticking time-bomb mystery.

For the premise portion of that equation, “Knock at the Cabin” puts the bait of a typical “What would you do?” conundrum onto the hook of a morality fable in the tradition of “The Box.”  As is often the case when wading in genre waters, “Knock at the Cabin” takes place at a commonplace location, a remote retreat in the woods.  Here, four strangers led by Leonard take two men and their adopted daughter hostage to present them with an unthinkable proposition.  Willingly kill one member of their three-person family, no suicides or intervention from the intruders, or else allow the apocalypse to destroy the world.

This is a fascinating position for a story to start from.  Classic conflicts come up regarding what to believe and who to trust.  Convictions change as new details alter perceptions.  All the while, an audience gets invited to play the same devilish guessing game at home, wondering who’s telling the truth, what twist comes next, and sitting on sharp pins and needles waiting anxiously for answers to these constantly evolving questions.

As for the acting half of Plot + Performance = Successful, Simple, Suspenseful Storytelling, “Knock at the Cabin’s” cast provides evidence for the adage that there are no small parts.  Certain characters have more screen time than others, of course.  Yet everyone puts a crucial cog into the machine to pull off an impressive illusion that this fantastical scenario could be possible using charged performances played as seriously as if this were “Sophie’s Choice.”

Leading the way as Leonard, Dave Bautista adds fuel to the fire in an imaginary feud with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson for which wrestler-turned-actor can be considered the most versatile performer.  It usually comes down to finding the right roles, and “Knock at the Cabin” uses Bautista’s semi-robotic cadence to great effect, exploiting his imposing intensity to fashion a gentle giant who can be seen as either compassionate or threatening, and you aren’t always entirely sure which part of his possibly explosive personality currently has control.

“Knock at the Cabin” also pulls a Janet Leigh by removing a presumably key player in unexpected fashion early on, immediately indicating that all bets are off regarding where everything might be headed.  With the threat level instantaneously increased, the heightened sense of danger plants an “anything can happen” idea that no one is safe and the path forward will be anything but predictable.

A setup such as this one can never end in a way that fully satisfies logic, realism, and viewer expectations.  A setup such as this one, where every possible outcome remains in the air until end credits roll, can never please everyone with its conclusion, either.  Indeed, it’s my understanding that “Knock at the Cabin’s” ending does something different than the “Cabin at the End of the World” novel does, miffing devoted readers in the process.  I haven’t read the book.  I don’t even know what that original ending is, so I have no dog in the faux fight of which way the story might have been better off going.

I can only take “Knock at the Cabin” for what it is, which is a character-driven thriller that attracts attentive eyes by having its charismatic cast turn the screws on a highly suspenseful narrative.  That’s essentially the same thing I said earlier.  I don’t know too many other ways to alternatively identify this type of tale, although M. Night Shyamalan seems to keep finding entertaining new ways to tell them.

Review Score: 80

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