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If M. Night Shyamalan is known for anything, it is his use of twists in his works. His early works like The Sixth Sense solidified his career as a modern master of the thriller genre, however more recently the quality of his films has taken a downturn. Recent movies like Old have failed to live up to expectations and, unfortunately, his latest film Knock at the Cabin continues this trend.
Knock at the Cabin follows Eric (Jonathan Groff of Hamilton), Andrew (Ben Aldridge of Pennyworth), and their daughter Wen (Kristen Cui) who take a vacation to a secluded cabin on a lake in the woods. They are visited by Leonard (Dave Bautista of Guardians of the Galaxy), Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird of The Outfit), Adriane (Abby Quinn of Radium Girls), and Redmond (Rupert Grint of Harry Potter) who claim to have seen visions of the apocalypse and the only way it can be averted is if Eric, Andrew, and Wen decide to kill one member of their family.
The biggest problem with the movie comes from the expectation that one would expect to have regarding a movie by Shyamalan. It’s less that the viewers are bringing their own baggage to the movie, but that the filmmakers believe the viewer will be bringing their own preconceived notions about what the movie will be to the screening. This causes the movie to devote a considerable amount of time to playing both sides of the coin against each other, namely the question of whether these four home invaders are telling the truth, or are they making it up in some perverse power fantasy specifically designed to compel this family to kill one of their own. Because the movie does not commit to this until the end of the third act, it ultimately feels shallow and does not quite have a solid emotional ending because, by design, the audience is trying to outthink the movie about a mystery that shouldn’t be a mystery.
The other major issue is that the movie shows flashbacks but they are some of the least interesting or relevant flashbacks ever put into a film. The audience does not need to see Eric introducing Andrew to his parents or when Eric and Andrew go to adopt Wen because, considering the movie opens with the family as a cohesive unit, that is assumed to have happened at some point before this moment. Similarly, the viewer does not need an explanation about where the gun came from, considering there was already an expositional scene about the attack in the bar and the viewer knows the gun exists. The issue with this is that all this screentime being devoted to scenes that provide little to no additional context when scenes about the four attackers would have been both more interesting and more useful for the viewer. That said, having that backstory would have given away the ending, however the ending should have never been a reveal to begin with. The mystery should not be are the four invaders telling the truth, it should be how is this family going to react to this situation.
At the end of the day, this is not Shyamalan’s worst movie. That’s not an endorsement, however it is a mid-tier film in his extensive filmography. There is very little rewatch value however, considering that the focus is put in the wrong place leading to the fact that subsequent viewing experiences will not net the viewer any new information. It is a Universal film however so it will be available to stream at some point in the future on Peacock.
Final Rating: 7/10
