Knock at the Cabin – Film Review

While vacationing at a remote cabin, a young girl and her parents are taken hostage by four armed strangers who demand that the family make an unthinkable choice to avert the apocalypse. With limited access to the outside world, the family must decide what they believe before all is lost.

Despite the fact that M. Night Shyamalan is one of the most divisive directors to ever grace the movie industry, I am always excited to see a brand new movie of his. Why, you might ask? It just so happens that I love nearly every single one of his movies, believe it or not.

Although I wasn’t too big of a fan of Old, I still respected Shyamalan for taking some humongous creative risks and telling a story that he wanted to tell. His newest film, Knock at the Cabin – based on the novel “The Cabin at the End of the World” by Paul Tremblay – is yet another example of why Shyamalan is so divisive.

This movie is going to be one that you’ll either love or hate most likely. I however, kind of fell in the middle. I enjoyed this movie but it’s not even close to being one of his best works. Split and Glass are infinitely better in my personal opinion, but I still enjoyed just how intense and suspenseful this outing was.

We get to follow this family who’s locked inside of this cabin for essentially ninety-five minutes or so and it can be quite an intense ride. We feel as if we are locked in there with them, and we have no choice but to hope and pray that everything is alright. The whole movie centers around this potential apocalypse that may or may not be happening outside.

It’s a great central plot idea but I must admit that I found everything to be hugely predictable. Even the third act reveals didn’t come as a surprise to me because I just knew early on what the whole story was going to be like. It’s probably Shyamalan’s least surprising film to date, which is quite odd.

Nevertheless, though, Knock at the Cabin does find some creative and fun ways to get audiences on the edge of their seats for most of the running time. It also forces you to wonder what you would do if you were to ever find yourself in a crazy situation such as the one our protagonists are going through. Would you trust a big group of strangers who insist that the world is ending as they speak, or would you trust yourself? It’s a tough thing to ponder over.

A large part as to why this movie works the way it does is because of Dave Bautista‘s excellent performance as Leonard. He’s one of the four strangers that comes to the cabin to inform Andrew (Ben Aldridge), Eric (Jonathan Groff), and Wen (Kristen Cui) of the impending apocalypse, and he makes every single scene so much better.

He has a quiet, chaotic calm to him that’s genuinely eerie. On the surface, he certainly seems like a friendly enough guy, but you get the sense that if you cross him or do something that he doesn’t like, he will have absolutely no issue killing you on the spot. He’s inviting yet dangerous all at once.

And really, that’s a great way to describe the movie as a whole. Shyamalan invites you on a journey with these characters and this story, but it’s a bit dangerous because you’re going to walk out of the theatre either loving or hating it, most likely. How incredibly poetic.

Knock at the Cabin sees Dave Bautista take command of the screen in an impressive way, even if the story feels a little bit too predictable and underwhelming at times.