Movie Review: Knock at the Cabin

By all accounts, Knock at the Cabin is about as buttoned up as M. Night Shyamalan will allow a movie of his to be. This one location thriller has a simple premise (4 strangers break into an isolated lakeside cabin and force the family staying there to make an unthinkable choice: sacrifice a member of their family to prevent the apocalypse or save themselves while the rest of the population dies) and  straightforward execution that relies heavily on generating tension from its contained setting and the crucial question of whether or not the family (Jonathan Groff, Ben Alridge, Kristen Cui) believe these strangers (Dave Bautista, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Abby Quinn, Rupert Grint) are telling the truth about this dire situation. After the compelling yet extremely messy Old, setting his sights on a smaller target allowed him to focus more on his direction and it pays off in a big way as Knock at the Cabin is one of the most tightly-assembled movies he's ever made. There's a real urgency to the storytelling as it establishes an uneasy tone in the opening scene in which Bautista suddenly approaches Cui as she catches grasshoppers next to the cabin, the cinematography duo of Jarin Blaschke and Lowell A.Meyer do an excellent job of framing the claustrophobic dread happening inside of the cabin while also exploring the serenity of the surrounding secluded location that further complicates the protagonists questioning of whether or not the horrific events their captors are describing to/showing them via a television news broadcast are actually happening and the performances from the home invaders (especially Bautista-who gives the finest performance of his career in only his 2nd proper leading role) toe the line between compassionate and unsettling so finely that it becomes borderline impossible to determine what their true intentions are.    

Just like his ambition has gotten the best of him in the past, playing it relatively safe here manages to hurt Shyamalan in the area that often makes or breaks his movies: the ending. The big twist in Knock at the Cabin is that there isn't one. The audience gets an inkling of how it could end about a third of the way through and it ends up sticking to that path with no detours. 

My feelings towards the finale only became more ambivalent when I read the summary of the novel Knock at the Cabin is based on (The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay) and discovered that Shyamalan dramatically transformed the final act from something that was bleak and full of rich potential for spirited debates about morality into something vanilla that was significantly easier for mainstream audiences to swallow. While it's understandable that Shyamalan wanted to put his own stamp on the story to differentiate it from the source material, it's shocking that those changes are so predictable and devoid of significant emotional weight. It's really ironic that this is the movie where Shyamalan choose to contain his gonzo side in favor of something more conventional because if he went all out, Knock at the Cabin could've immediately been in the conversation for the title of the best film of his now 15-film deep catalog. 

Grade: B