Jonah Naplan   February 4, 2023

I didn’t much care for M. Night Shymalan’s last movie, “Old,” or for the one before that, “Glass,” nor was I over the moon about his movie before that, “Split,” either. M. Night Shyamalan is the living embodiment of the term “hit or miss,” and yet I still somehow have faith in him as a director. When Shyamalan is at his best, he soars, and produces some of his best work to date—“Signs” being my favorite film of his, but also “The Sixth Sense and “Unbreakable.” Heck, I even like “The Village.” (Even though his iconic twist is meh). M. Night’s newest, “Knock at the Cabin” is easily his best film in the last five years, but still falls into the trap of messiness that Shyamalan always seems to get caught up in, in an attempt to recreate the lightning in a bottle that was his earlier years.

“Knock at the Cabin” quickly follows in the same vein as many other trapped thrillers, not just in the dark and sometimes disturbing tone, but in its plot beats too. While watching the movie, I couldn’t quite put my finger on what “Knock at the Cabin” reminded me of. But then, ah yes. “10 Cloverfield Lane” was just the movie. And a better one too. But the setup here differentiates.

The movie is about four people who suddenly arrive unannounced at a cabin deep in the woods, occupied by a family of three—two dads, Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and their adopted eight-year-old daughter Wen (a stand-out Kristen Cui). Leonard (Dave Bautista) seems to be the ringleader. He and three others—Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Redmond (Rupert Grint) and Adriane (Abby Quinn)—impose on them an impossible decision. Their family has been chosen to decide the fate of the future of humanity. Either they kill one of the members of their family, or the apocalypse will rise, plaguing everything in sight. Each time they say “no” to a request from the almost cult like group of people, something catastrophic happens within the cabin and in the outside world, bringing terror, horrific tsunamis and world shattering earthquakes.

The movie does not initially put much care into explaining why exactly this family has been picked to carry this inconceivable burden, nor does it give complete reasoning by the time the credits roll. “Knock at the Cabin” is often effective as a thriller, but is plagued by the common issue that is a good idea, but poor execution. The story is well written enough, and the characters are acted quite splendidly all around, but although the movie has an intriguing premise, it leads to a puzzlingly unsatisfying ending that kind of has a classic Shyamalan twist, but also kind of doesn’t.

By the time the movie ends, we feel empty. Not because the film has drained us emotionally, but because we didn’t feel full in the first place and are still itching for more food. There’s a lot of meat on the bones of “Knock at the Cabin,” and it’s good meat, but because the movie ends in such a straightforward and dull way, the often smart and suspenseful setup never really gets a chance to shine. It’s somewhat because M. Night Shyamalan’s screenplay—written in part by Michael Sherman and Steve Desmond—is unfocused. “Knock at the Cabin” has too much on its mind, and that may actually be because Shyamalan is here accompanied by other writers. As was typical of all M. Night Shyamalan movies, of all varying levels of quality, Shyamalan, and Shyamalan alone, inherited the screenwriting credit. It used to be a much coveted title to see that a movie was “written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan,” and yet “Knock at the Cabin” is not lower-tier M. Night. The reason I bring up writing credits is because “Knock at the Cabin” is more or less a step down from the thoughtfulness that was Shyamalan’s earlier films, and it could be because the director and screenwriter is sharing his iconic throne with others.

Most of the characters in “Knock at the Cabin” are one-note singularities, defined only by minor phenotypes that can only begin to scratch the surface of what the film suggests to be a complex set of caricatures. Bautista is the hulking muscle-man, yet he’s a kindly second grade teacher on the inside. That’s what we’re told, but never shown. Grint is the red-headed bartender, and Quinn is a young and desperate mother. Both characters are given so little justice in the movie that it makes you squirm. Although Groff and Aldridge are both respectable in the movie, even they aren’t gifted with much to do. Groff is the more naive, calm character in this scenario, looking for hope on the other side, while Aldridge turns his years of pent-up anger into rage when the home invasion starts taking a toll on the family’s bond.

The film has strong undertones of homophobia, and I know that Shyamalan means well in empowering his protagonists, but I felt squeamish when M. Night proved time and time again that he wasn’t going to let the LGBTQ+ politics be. Putting it simply, a gay couple in a movie shouldn’t be out of the ordinary anymore, yet “Knock at the Cabin” makes the uncomfortable decision to relentlessly put our characters through the wringer, even bruiting an ultimately pointless storyline about Redmond.

But Shyamalan continues to put care into making sure the audience is entertained, and “Knock at the Cabin” does have many suspenseful moments. I noticed a few subtle homages to Shyamalan’s work early in his career, that proves the director is still refining his skills in ratcheting up tension. In the late nineties and early 2000s, Shyamalan came pretty darn close to becoming a modern day Alfred Hitchcock, but unlike the iconic director of “Psycho” and “North by Northwest,” M. Night has had his downfall in recent years, with some of his movies considered a few of the worst of all time. His newest inches extremely close to breaking the recent Shyamalan curse, and in fact, I can imagine a version of “Knock at the Cabin” that does break even, coming full circle back to the movies that still make M. Night Shyamalan one of my favorite directors.

But his incentive with this film is unclear, even though what we get is sometimes gorily disturbing and often intriguing. “Knock at the Cabin” is one of the most clumsiest but also entertaining movies I’ve seen in a while, a film so self-serious that it curiously overlooks its own pratfalls.

Now playing in theaters.