 A thrillingly tense return to form from a director who, for better or for worse, makes the kind of movies he wants to see. While vacationing at a remote cabin in the woods, a young girl and her parents are taken hostage by four armed strangers who demand they make an unthinkable choice to avert the apocalypse. Confused, scared and with limited access to the outside world, the family must decide what they believe before all is lost. Release date: 3 February 2023 (UK) Director: M. Night Shyamalan Producers: M. Night Shyamalan, Ashwin Rajan, Marc Bienstock Cinematography: Jarin Blaschke, Lowell A. Meyer Distributed by: Universal Pictures Adapted from: The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay A Horror Movie Review from Vicente Francisco Garcia It’s 2023, and art discourse is everywhere. How does one, as a reviewer of media / art, even begin to parse through the waves of opinions and dialogues that surround everything nowadays? Can art truly be critiqued on its own terms anymore? Director M. Night Shyamalan discusses this thought experiment often in interviews: when everyone expects a twist in his movies, when everyone expects him to tick certain boxes, when everyone derides his new material based on past material…how can he keep things fresh and exciting for himself as a director? The answer is simple: he started paying for his films himself. In a recent interview with the Guardian, he states “Maybe it’s the immigrant-Indian-wanting-to-please-everybody thing. There’s something about me that gets triggered by taking a lot of money and then wanting to please the person that gave me that money. That isn’t healthy. So I pay for the movies and…that allows me to take unusual swings, both in the stories that I’m telling and in the way I’m telling them.” A bold strategy from a bold filmmaker -- but in 2023, can an M. Night Shyamalan movie still be examined on its own terms when everyone online seems to have an opinion on him? What happens when his new movie becomes mired in online controversy and discussion before it’s even out? Knock At the Cabin had a lot of opinions made about it before it even released, with fans of the book worried about changes made to its story, writers online boycotting Shyamalan for not openly crediting the book’s author in the movie’s posters, and a slew of film fans ready to deride it based on Shymalan’s previous film, 2021’s widely-panned Old. (Also an adaptation.) Many people even got upset about the title, with the book’s dramatic and operatic “The Cabin At the End of the World” being cut down to the short, creepy, and succinct “Knock At the Cabin”. When everyone is ready to attack a film before anyone’s even seen it, how can one view it without some kind of bias or preconceived notion? So…let’s try something. Can Shyamalan, who often plays with genre expectations and loads his films with blunt religious motifs and themes, even begin to tackle the book’s ambiguity and nuance with the kind of precision it needs? Let’s not worry about that. Let’s have a thought experiment: let’s pretend no one knew about this movie and it has just dropped as a surprise release online. Let’s pretend we’ve never seen a Shyamalan film before, and haven’t read the (admittedly excellent) book this film is based on. With the enormous weight of expectations off the film’s back, is it…good? Does it stand on its own two feet? Shot in the middle of the pandemic and cleverly skirting most covid shooting limitations by using a limited cast and mostly one location, Knock At the Cabin, I am relieved to say, is a gem of a movie. Shyamalan, as a minority director who has self-funded his films for nearly a decade now, is nothing short of an inspiration for this film-loving nerd, and Knock is a breath of fresh air for this viewer. Playing out like an extended stage play in the Twilight Zone, the film is a tense, taut thriller, the kind we rarely see anymore. In the age of blockbusters and sequels, this one feels special. By spending his own money on the film, Shyamalan is under no producers’ expectations to gas the story up with pointless action or setpieces, instead choosing to let scenes breathe, the film becoming a series of increasingly-tense, dialogue-based debates and questions. The plot kicks in instantly, the audience given almost no time to settle in before the creepiness begins. A family consisting of two fathers (Eric and Andrew) and one adopted daughter (Wen) are approached by four strangers at their isolated cabin in the woods and faced with a dilemma: none of them can leave until a member of the family sacrifices one of their own. Why? To save the entire world. An unknown clock begins ticking as the four strangers, who cannot make the sacrifice themselves, desperately try to convince the family that the choice must be made, lest everyone else in the world die an apocalyptic death. They can’t really prove it though, the husbands have to just kinda take their word for it. We see news footage of the apocalyptic events starting, but surely it’s fake news, right? CGI? This has to all be a prank, right? It’s a plot worthy of Serling himself. Shyamalan, rewriting a script by Steve Desmond & Michael Shermon, (based on the book by Paul Tremblay), adds in his own unique touches throughout -- the religious motifs he uses often return; cameras get up close in actors’ faces and tilt in odd dutch angles; clever yet subtle editing is used to maximum effect in ratcheting up the tension. You start to feel like you’re watching a fever dream. The 35mm cinematography uses a shallow depth of field to keep everything close to the lens in extreme focus, while the rest of the world seems to melt away into the hazy background. With most of the film taking place in the titular cabin, the bulk of our entertainment comes from our stellar cast. Dave Bautista is hypnotic, any shreds of his former wrestling persona long-gone. He turns in a great performance as an elementary teacher (!!) forced to ask a family to do the impossible, with the rest of the cast keeping up with performances all worthy of acclaim. Kirsten Cui stuns as the lovable, grasshopper-catching Wen; Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldrige never fall into gay stereotypes and instead imbue our leads with stern, resigned weariness. Even Rupert Grint, long known for playing the comedic and affable Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films, makes the most of a small role with a dark, moody performance, the kind we’ve rarely seen from him. Shyamalan and his cast are taking the material as seriously as possible, and it works wonders without ever leaning so hard into self-seriousness that it becomes parody. There is much to be said about comparing this film’s tone to previous Shyamalan films, but we said we’re not gonna do that here. On its own merits, the film holds its tone for the entire movie, slowly notching up the tension as each minute passes. The film builds and builds until an ending that will divide, but asks big, scary questions about God and free will and grief. Asked by an online user about what scares him the most in the same Guardian interview, Shyamalan states “Ideating on how to keep my family safe. Those fears in any form…Not being a good dad or a good husband. So it’s always about the fragility of the family.” You get the sense that, whether using gay leads or not, he’s channeling a universal truth here. Every parent wants to protect their family. But could you do so knowing you’d sacrifice everyone else in the process? You can feel Shyamalan wrestling with the question in the film itself, and the added layer of a very-much-non-nuclear family imbues the film with additional subtext rarely seen in genre material. Why should Eric and Andrew sacrifice one of each other or their daughter for the world when so many in said world wouldn’t hesitate to kill them simply for their choice of lifestyle? “We don’t have a homophobic bone in our bodies,” one of the four strangers states, trying to reiterate to our leads that they are not there to kill anyone because Eric and Andrew are gay. The audience hears the line, but begins to wonder “well…are you sure?” Go see this movie. Go into it even if you hated The Last Airbender or thought Old was ridiculous or think this director peaked 25 years ago. Give it a fair shake, and maybe if you like it you can check out the book too. As genre fans, adaptations of great original ideas like this one grow increasingly rare, and Shyamalan pulls it off with aplomb. Though book fans may find themselves frustrated with changes to the ending, if you go into this with an open mind, you just may find you share Shyamalan’s fears too. Vicente Francisco Garcia Vicente Francisco Garcia is a writer/editor/director based in Southern California, where he eats too much In N Out and works on a variety of film and commercial-related projects. When he's not writing, on twitter, or on set, he's probably reading a trashy horror novel. You can follow him @spookyvicente on IG, Twitter, and Tiktoks. (You know, if you're cool.) check out toady's book review here THE HEART AND SOUL OF HORROR MOVIE REVIEW WEBSITES |
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