With his two most recent outings, M. Night Shyamalan has chosen not to write an original script, but to adapt pre-existing material. With Old he adapted a stellar French comic and reworked the third act to bring a more concrete plot to what was a mostly ambiguous ending. With his latest, Knock at the Cabin, he has adapted Paul Tremblay’s novel, The Cabin at the End of the World, again taking some creative license (so I’m told — I have yet to crack the book). The result is a solid thriller that uses a relatively high concept to bring strong emotional beats to what, on its surface, appears to be a typical “home invasion” flick.
In it we find a family spending their vacation in, you guessed it, a cabin in the woods. Eric (Jonathan Groff), Andrew (Ben Aldridge), and their daughter Wen (Kristen Cui) are enjoying some quality time together when their relaxation is interrupted by a foursome of unexpected guests (Dave Bautista, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Rupert Grint, and Abby Quinn). The visitors enter their rental and deliver some terrible news to our heroes: The world is about to end, and the only way it can be stopped is via a sacrifice. It has been foretold by forces larger than any of them can comprehend, that this loving family must make a terrible choice: One of the trio must die, and they must do so at the hands of the other two. The intruders make it very clear that they are not willing participants, and are acting in service of the greater good.
It all sounds like five flavors of BS to Eric and Andrew, but as the cursed night progresses, doubts form, allegiances change, and our heroes are forced to look back on their own difficult history for answers.
The film’s greatest strengths come from the performances. Groff and Aldridge make a powerful couple, both interested in protecting their family, but with different approaches to doing so. Together with Cui, they make a believably loving family unit, so lovely as to be aspirational. Same goes for the team of intruders. Each of the foursome has a notably different background, and each is played with a level of humanity that home invasion thrillers don’t normally provide. Typically we see masked and anonymous invaders with unclear motivations. That is very much not the case here. In Knock at the Cabin, the antagonists claim a believable altruism in their shameful pursuit, and a palpable regret that they find themselves breaking into a home carrying news of Armageddon. This believability is essential in moving the plot forward. The intruders sound crazy, but they also sound…normal. The victimized family experiences a collective, sensible doubt. Under no circumstances would they ever engage in harmful actions against their own, unless, of course, their attackers are telling the truth and all of existence is on the line. It’s compelling stuff on paper, made even moreso by a strong marriage of craft and performance.
This is to say that Cabin marks a notable growth spurt in Shyamalan’s directorial style. The film plays mostly as a chamber piece, and the camerawork allows the plotting to keep many small plates spinning at once. Tension is maximized via the layering of multiple plot beats which unspool simultaneously. An escape plan is secretly managed by our restrained heroes, while at the same time the intruders are doing their best to keep the situation in check and, as they see it, save the world. The pacing positively cooks on both a micro and macro level. Shyamalan fits a wealth of plot into the relatively short runtime by inserting a remarkable amount of information into every frame, while a handful of flashbacks are employed to break up the setting and inform the present day action. There’s a lot of information to get through here, but the exposition feels effortless, told as much through visuals as it is through dialogue. Shyamalan, for all his oddball sensibilities, might be the best in the biz when it comes to involving his camera in the action without announcing its presence.
Like much of Shyamalan’s more recent work, Knock at the Cabin plays like a feature length Twilight Zone episode — thoughtful genre material in service of strong themes. It’s the type of film that isn’t easily categorized, but manages to sneak its subversions past the viewer using familiar territory. Knock at the Cabin pretends, albeit only for a short moment, to be The Strangers, but ends up bringing much more to the table without sacrificing requisite genre delights. It’s a scary, intense movie, but the dramatic beats are what ultimately stick in the memory. It’s the character work, rather than the apocalyptic imagery, that will leave the viewer haunted.
Shades of Frailty and Storm of the Century abound, Knock at the Cabin cleverly traverses ethically murky territory involving sacrifice, faith, and the point at which the line between love and possession is blurred. Can love be selfish when it comes to protecting one’s own? Is sacrifice selfish since it is committed as a means to an end? There are no answers after a single viewing, but it leaves a lot to chew on when the credits roll.
This may be off-putting for some, as the film’s end feels a mite incomplete plot-wise, but thematically it comes together quite nicely. Shyamalan has been wrongfully deemed the master of the twist, when really, it’s the heart that thrums at the center of his films which proves to be his truest calling card (and really, he’s only ever delivered two actual twists across his entire filmography if you ask me — no clue why it became an expectation).
Bonus: Scott Smith’s A Simple Plan is prominently featured on the titular cabin’s bookshelf. It is my favorite book.
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
Written by M. Night Shyamalan, Steve Desmond, Michael Sherman, Paul Tremblay
Starring Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Dave Bautista, Nikki Amuka-Bird
Rated R, 100 minutes
