Knock at the Cabin Review – Shyamalan’s Accidental Tragicomic Thriller
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Of all the things M. Night Shyamalan intended his 2023 bizarre thriller “Knock at the Cabin” to be, I don’t think comedic was part of the list. It’s supposed to be a tense horror-suspense story about four strange individuals barging into the beautiful forest cabin of a family on vacation, threatening them to make an impossible sacrifice. It metamorphoses into a wacky, cult-like movie about a friendly family versus armed psychos who claim an apocalypse is around the corner. While the plot is intriguing, most of the cast just didn’t seem convinced of the outlandish premise while acting their parts, not even the ones who believe in the apocalypse—and that was somehow quite funny.
Director M. Night Shyamalan has co-written “Knock at the Cabin” with Paul Tremblay, and Steve Desmond, and the film opens with an intriguing scene of eight-year-old Wen (Kristen Cui) catching grasshoppers when a hulking stranger called Leonard (Dave Bautista) approaches her. It’s a strange scene, you don’t know what Leonard’s intentions are, he seems intimidating, but is friendly with Wen, and their first interaction sets the tone for the rest of the story – you don’t know whether the strangers are loonies or legit. Leonard and his comrades —a nervous Adrianne (Abby Quinn), an aggressive Redmond (Rupert Grint), and a frantic Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird)— attempt to strike a horrid deal with Wen’s dads, Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge), after breaking into their cabin and insisting the family could save the world from an apocalypse.
The screenplay for the one hour and forty-minute runtime is engaging, although some flashback scenes meant to explain Eric and Andrew’s life with their daughter Wen don’t add much emotional heft to the tale. Child actor Kristen Cui, who marks her debut with “Knock at the Cabin,” is probably the most likable element of the film. She is expertly directed by Shyamalan to portray Wen as a curious, intelligent child. Dave Bautista (Dune 2/Guardians of the Galaxy) is strange as Leonard, the leader of the strangers’ pack, who is constantly checking his watch and constantly spooking Wen’s family with his end-of-the-world talk.
Ben Aldridge portrays Andrew as the more practical, assertive, and logical of Wen’s dads, convinced that Leonard and his group are part of a bizarre, homophobic extremist cult targeting their family. In contrast, Jonathan Groff’s Eric is slightly more vulnerable and malleable, so you never know when and if he will break. “Knock at the Cabin” is able to maintain suspense over the motives of the strangers, are they simply nuts or are they really God’s chosen ones to end an apocalypse? Who knows! But, like I said, Abby Quinn, Rupert Grint, and Nikki Amuka-Bird just don’t sell the eccentric parts well, despite spirited performance, which make “Knock at the Cabin” feel like an improv stage play rather than a sombre thriller with religious overtones.
Maybe M. Night Shyamalan should’ve pushed the eccentricity a little further and costumed the doomsday prophets in elaborate dresses, just to add a touch of deliberate hilarity, or perhaps turned this into an out-and-out horror comedy; I feel like it might have been far more entertaining. In its current form, “Knock at the Cabin” is a slow-paced, mediocre thriller, which was a decent one-time-watch for me.
You can stream “Knock at the Cabin” on Netflix.
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