Knock at the Cabin

 

Score:  C-

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

Starring Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge

Running time: 100 minutes

Rated R

Long Story Short:  Resurgent director M. Night Shyamalan's latest horror outing offers a twist on the old home invasion plot.  It features some nice roles, including an oddly but well-cast Dave Bautista, and the premise is quite intriguing.  But it goes exactly the wrong direction with the plot, for both creative and real-world considerations, and the film curdles with it.  Skip it.

A young family, dads Andrew (Aldridge) and Eric (Groff) and adopted daughter, Wen (Cui), take a vacation to a remote cabin in the woods, merrily singing and catching grasshoppers.  Literally out of the blue, however, an enormous but seemingly peaceful man named Leonard (Bautista) introduces himself to Wen while she plays near the cabin.  Growing more frightened, Wen runs back to alert Andrew and Eric, but soon the family is taken hostage by a group of four strangers.  The strangers insist that they don't want to hurt the family - but that they must force the family to make a decision, one that will decide the fate of the planet.

**Warning: major plot spoilers ahead! (this is an M. Night Shyamalan film)**

Knock at the Cabin is a decently well-made psychological horror film, thanks to quality acting and some nice suspense, but it is ultimately ruined by taking the wrong path with its main plot and not exploiting the potential of its intriguing premise.  I don't usually watch horror films, and while I enjoyed M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, I haven't seen any other movies by him in a long time.  But I was drawn to the possibility of a horror of ideas rather than the blood and guts I avoid.  The cast does a good job here, creating a believable setup early on and holding it together as well as possible as the plot becomes strained to breaking.  Bautista, not the world's most talented actor IMO, brings a jarring, almost disturbing, gentility to his character.  His team - including Ron from Harry Potter - are bit players but interesting, and Aldridge and Groff as the dads help create some emotional connection to their plight.  The dialogue is decent, the pacing pretty good, and the tone stays pretty consistent and tense (at least until the very end).

The undoing of the movie comes in its creative choices.  The family is asked to sacrifice one of their own in order to avert a global apocalypse, so the main question is: is this just a sick game that the strangers are playing to terrorize the family, or do these seeming-wackos actually know something that could help prevent catastrophe?  From both a creative perspective and one relating to the real world we live in, the answer should have been: they're just wackos (even if sincere ones).  The apocalypse soon begins to unfold, one step at a time, and as it does, it gets more and more ridiculous rather than horrifying (giant tsunami? - OK; people filming planes falling out of the sky everywhere? unintentionally silly).  By going the other way, the film would give the family's resistance more meaning, and Shyamalan could have played with more tricks to make it seem like an apocalypse might occur.  Even more importantly, the apocalypse story line is exactly the wrong plot for our time.  Society often feels overrun with lunatic conspiracy theories - from vaccines killing people (or at least "tracking" them) to secret pedophile elites to rigged or stolen elections.  Knock at the Cabin could have sent a strong message by saying: the wackos may be sincere and scary, but they are WRONG.  Instead, we get just another series of inexplicable (the film doesn't even try to explain) disasters, as if asking the audience to shrug its shoulders and say "what a pity."

***

Well, my decision to go off my usual movie path, via Knock at the Cabin, was a failure.  I probably won't be going to see any more horror movies for a long time (by the way, what the heck is it that makes people want to see them - particularly the slashers?).  I do want to encourage Hollywood to try more intriguing ideas like this one starts out with - just make sure you've got filmmakers who can handle material that's outside the norm.  Hopefully there will be another Oscar contender or two coming to theaters before the ceremony arrives, but at the very least, fun action movies are right around the corner (starting with Ant-Man 3 next week!).  For now, skip this one and stay in for something better on streaming.

* By http://www.impawards.com/2023/knock_at_the_cabin_ver3.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72371404