The world is about to end and four religious individuals break into your cabin stating that you have to die to save the world, what would you do? That’s the simple yet super effective question at the center of M Night Shyamalan’s new film “Knock At The Cabin”. The film follows two dads named Eric and Andrew (Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge) and their daughter Wen (Kristen Cui) as their vacation up to their cabin is disrupted by four intruders (Dave Bautista, Rupert Grint, Abby Quinn, Nikki Amuka-Bird) who speak of end times. The following is a tight 100 minute thriller that makes you question what belief really is.
Without any spoilers of any sort, this film is Shyamalan at his best. It’s a tight and tense thriller that has you white knuckled throughout as you try to figure what’s going on and question whether or not you yourself believes what these intruders are saying. This film would have never worked if it was not for the strength in certain categories. Two of those defining categories being the acting and the writing.
This film is a one location story where you’re stuck with two sides of an argument trying to prove their correctness to each other. The performances on the level of being able to convince the audience for one is stellar. I found myself jumping from one side and the other because I couldn’t really tell what was truly going on based on how convincing everyone was. The film wouldn’t have worked without that. On the simple level of acting though, the performances are strong and there’s even a super strong child performance from Wen, the strongest child performance in an M Night Shyamalan film since Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense. This film also proves once and for all that Dave Bautista is the best wrestler turned actor ever as his performance as Leonard is one of the best in this film.
The writing also helped strengthen the film as the film was both psychologically intense and also quite intriguing. There were scenes where I felt as if the safety of humanity was on my shoulders. One such scene where Leonard (Dave Bautista) shows a picture of a team of basketball players that he coaches at the school he teaches at hit me a certain way emotionally that I didn’t expect it to. The film dives into some biblical concepts but it never feels like it’s too preachy. The film doesn’t really take a side and it’s more a story about how we don’t really listen to each other and we try to best each other any chance we get.
Other elements that stood out to me on this one are the score and the way it was shot. The score added an extra layer of anxiety that worked in many of the film’s more distressing moments. The film was also shot with an aura of realism. M Night Shyamalan stated that he kept some of the some imperfections to heighten the realism of the film. It’s super impressive that he pulled this off since he’s been funding his own movies since The Visit. M Night Shyamalan’s cameo is also a great one in this one. Some people in my theater didn’t catch it but those who did were dying laughing.
On a spoiler free level, this film is one of Shyamalan’s best and it proves that when he has the right story, he can make gold. The performances and the story around it adapted very well by Shyamalan elevated this and made it into more than just a simple home invasion thriller. Fans of the genre and fans of Shyamalan should check this one out. To get a full understanding of what I really loved about this film, I need to get into spoilers of the rich subtext present and the messages found throughout the film’s runtime.
Like most M Night Shyamalan films, the plot centers around something or someone that is very sci-fi or thriller in concept but means something completely different deep down. One of my favourite examples of this is Split, which is a top 3 Shyamalan for me. Split on the surface is a film about a man with 24 personalities and the film is almost a villain origin story but told from the point of view of Casey (Anya Taylor Joy) who is one of the girls that he kidnapped. On the surface, it’s a solid and quite terrifying thriller but deep down it’s saying something important and profound about our society. Split deep down is a film about abuse and you could even say that the true villain of the film is child abuse. The film discusses how pervasive this abuse is and how those at the receiving end decide to deal with their trauma from this said abuse in either a positive way or a negative way. The Village as another example is about a colony of people who have isolated themselves from the rest of the world, but at the core it’s a film that questions people’s devotion to a belief or a group.
Knock At The Cabin does this exact same thing. On the surface it’s an apocalyptic thriller with a hint of Michael Heneke’s Funny Games, but deep down it’s a film that dissects and questions people who find themselves in a state of absolute belief. I’ve already seen people complaining on social media about how this film seems like "a conservative faith-based film masquerading as a cool home-invasion thriller" for the single reason that it’s revealed at the end that the apocalypse was actually occurring. I don’t think that argument is entirely fair towards the film. For one, if it was a one sided conservative film, it would have painted the non believers as evil heathens but in actually all the characters fall in the gray area morally.
Most of the film is the two groups arguing whether or not the claim of an apocalypse is valid. The movie ends with Aldridge sacrificing Groff because Groff “sees” what they were trying to say and sees a vision of his family in the future without him. He makes the ultimate sacrifice because he would rather his husband and daughter have a good future without him then them having to live in a post apocalyptic world with them all still alive. This point is where I feel the true point of the film stems from and showcases how wrong some of these other readings of the film are. At the base of the actions of each of the characters, they are doing what they see as the answer so they can protect their families and the ones they love in their lives.
The juxtaposition of the gay couple with an asian daughter and the religious intruders who all met on a message board hammers home what Shyamalan is really trying to say. In a real world context when it comes to these arguments we are having in society, the bottom line of every side of these discussions is a need to protect families and those who we care about. While some of these arguments have been bogged down by misinformation and I don’t condone the hate that is spewed, the cause for these arguments is a need to protect.
As the movie chips away at the characters, you start to see that none of these people are really all that bad, but their personal beliefs have led them to commit these dark acts. The first scene of the film is a well directed exchange between Leonard and Wen that at first glance feels a bit sinister but once the film continues, you learn is actually coming from a place of care for children as he is revealed to be a teacher at an elementary school. He is doing what he is doing because he cares about his students and doesn’t want them to end up dying.
The easiest comparison to make is that clearly the family is very much the representation of left wing ideals and the intruders are right wing ideals as that has been a point of contention for a while and has heated up recently. That belief has led some people to make some judgements on the film because they went in with preconceived ideas and notions.
This is definitely a film that you put yourself into easily. This is a film that is the best experienced by leaving your own political agenda at the door and listening to what Shyamalan is trying to say. The film is not about who’s right and who’s wrong, but really about the fact that we are too quick to attack one another without hearing each other out about things.
This goes into my other point that I feel is super important when discussing this film. That point being the toxicity of absolute devotion to a belief system and the problematic echo chambers that develop around these beliefs, a lot of the time based around politics. It’s no accident that the main family is a same sex couple and it’s also no accident that the intruders were four individuals with crazy beliefs that met on an online forum. The film is clearly calling out the extreme beliefs that portions of society have taken on recently that have done more harm than help.
One of the more distressing moments in the film for me was the first time that they ask the family to sacrifice someone and they say no. I didn’t expect the intruders to sacrifice themselves in such a cult like manner. The hardest part about that scene is seeing Rupert Grint put that bag over his head and accept his fate. In the first two moments of sacrifice, you see the pure humanity of these characters. These two are scared and they realize that they have dug themselves into a hole that they can’t get out of. That’s probably the most distressing and disturbing part of it all, you feel their fear and hopelessness right before they are brutally murdered by the other intruders.
That ties into the bigger idea of people who devote their whole lives to a shaky belief system. What might start out as a hope for something better in their own lives or a need to protect those you love could spiral into an extreme belief system that has you disassociating with society as a whole, like we’ve seen with such beliefs as Qanon and Trump voters. All those people may have started out with intentions to help those they love or belong to something, but that need spiralled into an existence of hate and misinformation. That can be tied back to each one of the intruders in their own way.
While some might see the film as a simple apocalyptic home invasion film, I see it as more of a call to action to listen to those who disagree with you and try to help those who have lost themselves in a false sense of reality. The film is clearly making a statement about how we are all humans who want to help and protect those who we care about, but sometimes those feelings can lead us to creating an echo chamber with others who also subscribe to some form of misinformation or extreme belief that does more harm than it does good. Sometimes the power of our love for others can lead us down paths that are detriment because we may be misinformed.
The film also discusses the idea of morality quite heavily. The question brought up throughout the film is protect your family or the rest of the world, the classic railroad track with one person vs a hundred people question. On the surface, some might believe that the film dives into politics and how both sides see certain things as moral and others as not but it really doesn’t. The intruders state right away that they aren’t their to attack them because they are a same sex couple but merely because they were at the cabin at the time they were instructed to go there. The morality in question that is discussed is the idea of protecting the few or the many. Jonathan Groff comes to the conclusion that he can do both by sacrificing himself at the end of the film. He finally realizes that if he died, both his family and everyone else would be able to survive. The critics using the word “morality” might cause viewers to assume that the film is much more political than it really is but the argument is more about doing what is morally right for those in your life.
This film goes in the camp of Shyamalan films that I deeply respect because it has a very compelling and thrilling story but deeper down it has something important that it’s trying to say. To put it simply, on a deeper level KNOCK AT THE CABIN is about how we should all listen to each other and help those in our lives who have found themselves caught in an extreme belief or idea that is causing more harm than good.
The Rating
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