Film Review: Knock at the Cabin
KNOCK AT THE CABIN IS A KNOCK OUT OF THE PARK
Crackling with confident, formal prowess and visual electricity, M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin is the director’s best film since 2004’s The Village. A family’s impossible choice framed by ratcheting tension and blistering performances, Shyamalan’s latest nerve-jangler is a chamber piece artfully designed to quicken pulses and break hearts. There isn’t a single wasted shot in Knock at the Cabin’s firecracker, 100-minute runtime: it’s astonishing to watch. Minor spoilers ahead…
Knock at the Cabin, director M. Night Shyamalan’s latest entry into his “family excursions from hell” canon after The Visit and Old, wastes no time. On vacation at a remote cabin with her dads Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge), eight-year-old Wen (a phenomenal Kristen Cui) is catching grasshoppers for her glass jar habitat when she’s interrupted by Leonard (Dave Bautista, giving a career-best performance), a hulking man whose intimidating frame belies a disarming softness. When the inquisitive girl asks the tattoo-laden interloper why he’s there, he kindly replies: “I suppose I’m here to make friends with you.” The tenderness in his voice allays the obvious stranger danger, but his seemingly honest - and ominous - followup sets the tone for the rest of the film: “But my heart is broken because of what I have to do today.”
Knock at the Cabin flies out of the gate with Shyamalan’s signature, formal braggadocio as Wen and Leonard’s interaction is framed within a series of uncomfortable closeups, navigating the sharp contrast between Bautista’s craggy, weathered features and Cui’s baby-faced innocence. Nestled in a visual fluency that immediately invokes unease, the audience is nervously caught in between exaggerated shot-reverse-shots, only broken when three other blurry figures emerge from the woods brandishing medieval-looking weaponry. It’s a doozy of an opening scene, and it establishes a promise Knock at the Cabin intends to keep at every turn: You’re about to see some confident, assured filmmaking.
“Translating the novel’s streamlined suspense into a visual feast, Shyamalan turns the claustrophobic setting into a battlefield of faith and belief.”
Fleeing back to the cabin, Wen warns her adoptive fathers of the ominous strangers approaching, but it isn’t before long the armed intruders force their way into the house and take the family captive. Doomsayers with a specific vision of a harrowing apocalypse, Leonard’s weapon-toting crew imparts the impossible task that has befallen Andrew, Eric, and their daughter: the end of the world is coming, and the only way to stop it is if the family makes the choice to sacrifice one of their own. Are these trespassers zealots with a shared delusion? Or are they true augurs of the end times? Adapted from author Paul Tremblay’s 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World, Knock at the Cabin tackles the same, cruel predicament as its source material.
Translating the novel’s streamlined suspense into a visual feast, Shyamalan turns the claustrophobic setting into a battlefield of faith and belief. Mining astounding flourish out of its restrictive set, Knock at the Cabin features some of the most gripping, audacious filmmaking in recent memory. Cinematographers Lowell A. Meyer and frequent Robert Eggers collaborator Jarin Blaschke ensure the film’s exquisite lensing, but Knock is still a Shyamalan joint through and through, employing a formal bravura that is not only gorgeous, but emotive and empathetic. A mastery of the closeup - continued from its corker of an opening scene - captures both horror and revelation with equal deftness: Brutal, artfully-obscured violence is conveyed through the gasps and winces of its witnesses, and dialogue is often delivered off-camera as the impact of words sweep across disbelieving faces. Other facets of visual control are equally impressive: Laser-precise rack focuses track subtle shifts in the narrative’s ever-wobbly power dynamics, and old, faulty lenses in the flashbacks mimic the hazy, splintered nature of memory. The camera is the ultimate storytelling tool, and Shyamalan never lets you forget it; Knock at the Cabin is a wonder to behold.
“Knock at the Cabin is still a Shyamalan joint through and through, employing a formal bravura that is not only gorgeous, but emotive and empathetic.”
Knock at the Cabin, like much of Shyamalan’s body of work, is a tale of grand, broad disaster shrunken down to intimate scale. Our everyday fears turned apocalyptic but confined within a home invasion thriller, the film strikes a delicate balance to maximize its tension. Dave Bautista once again proves his thespian bonafides as the soft-spoken Leonard, whose intimidating physicality deftly contrasts his melancholy reluctance. In fact, despite their actions and the wielding of savage-looking blades, Knock’s “villains” (Nikki Amuka-Bird, Abby Quinn, Rupert Grint) are portrayed mostly as ordinary people, which only lends to the conviction of their pleas and visions. As news reports of plagues, plane crashes, and tsunamis seemingly confirm the end of the world, small fissures begin to form between Andrew and Eric: Andrew holds fast that it’s all an elaborate smokescreen for a deliberate, homophobic attack, while Eric - who is initially just as disbelieving - begins to experience the gnawing sensation of doubt. Ben Aldridge and Jonathan Groff walk the tightrope of their precarious situation with a moving dynamic and underline the effectiveness of Knock at the Cabin’s binaries: Are Leonard and his compatriots dutiful saviors or deluded fanatics? Will Andrew and Eric believe them or not?
Shyamalan, who has long-since outgrown his early-career penchant for twist endings, opts for a sweeping, misty-eyed conclusion here: Knock at the Cabin diverges spectacularly from Tremblay’s bleak, ambiguous denouement. Many who find value in the cruel gut-punch of The Cabin at the End of the World will likely bristle heavily against Shyamalan’s hopeful, sentimental insistence, but I found myself taken by its reconfiguration of the novel’s themes. Shymalan has always excelled at coaxing powerful performances from his youngest stars, and Kristen Cui is no exception. Inextricable from the soul of the narrative, Cui’s vulnerable, precocious turn forms the backbone of the entire film and the secret weapon for its closing moments. Leaning into the story’s core dilemma, Knock at the Cabin’s ending feels less like a shock-laden copout and more like a textured commentary on our paranoid, doomscrolling zeitgeist, and most importantly, how we can find our way through it.
