Knock at the Cabin

Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan has endured in Hollywood long enough to be in the third phase of his career. His first and forever most glorious phase made him an Academy Award nominee while still in his twenties for his breakout blockbuster, 1999’s The Sixth Sense. It’s unlikely he’ll ever experience anything else quite like that cultural phenomenon which practically demanded multiple viewings, although his second-best film, 2002’s Signs, came close. The niche Shyamalan created for himself — splashy ambiguous marketing campaigns, contemporary original thrillers that turned on big twists — inevitably loosened its grip on moviegoers and by the time The Happening was released in 2008, the filmmaker had become a joke.

Shyamalan’s second phase saw him fall even further at the beginning of this century’s second decade. No one out there but the bean counters can defend The Last Airbender (2010) or nepo baby sci-fi snorer After Earth (2013) and their director seemed destined to work on the industry’s fringes, languishing in some kind of creative purgatory like countless other genre filmmakers whose heydays had past.

And yet, Shyamalan pressed on and his subsequent film, 2015’s low-budget The Visit, got good reviews and turned a generous profit. His subsequent effort, 2017’s gimmicky dissociative identity disorder Split, was a bona fide hit and somehow Shyamalan was back, working again with his old muses Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson to conclude the downright improbable so-called Eastrail 1777 Trilogy with Glass (2019).

To the casual observer, Shyamalan’s third phase might look a lot like his first, but the budgets now are lower, the stakes are lower, and the movies do not rely as heavily on the director’s signature brand or the knockout twists with which he began. Shyamalan may have fancied himself Hitchcock at the start of his career, but he’s evolved into someone more like John Carpenter or Joe Dante, auteurs with gifts, tools, and clear passions but whose creative independence is now far from unbridled.

At least Shyamalan remains in good standing with traditional distribution methods. Every film of his since The Sixth Sense has had the backing of one of the major studios. Shyamalan’s latest, Knock at the Cabin, is his fifth straight project at Universal Pictures, eclipsing his four-picture deal with Disney back at the turn of the century. Universal is one of the only major studios out there still believing in the mid-range movie and based purely on his box office record, their faith in Shyamalan is well-placed.

Adapted from Paul G. Tremblay’s 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World, Knock is a mildly pleasant surprise and the director’s best work since his bygone Disney days. It tells the story of a married gay couple with a young daughter whose vacation in the woods takes a sudden dark and ominous turn with the arrival of four doomsdayers claiming that the fate of the entire world rests in the family’s hands.

You’re not initially sure what to make of the movie. Is it a home invasion thriller? Is it a parable about tolerance? Shayamalan and his fellow screenwriters Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman, both making their feature screenwriting debuts, keep you guessing with a structure that fleshes out the family with flashbacks. Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge) are clearly loving spouses and parents with no apparent skeletons in their closet. Like most single-sex couples, they have encountered some persecution, which makes them suspect that getting tied up in chairs and instructed to make a fatal sacrifice in order to salvage humanity might well be a targeted attack.

Or maybe it’s just some sick hoax perpetuated by unwell members of a cult. The four invaders, led by the calm and calculated Leonard (Dave Bautista, making a convincing case for his continued prominence in film), seem fully committed to this reckoning, which they try their hardest to convey is not driven by religious fanaticism, to minimal success.

At its heart, Knock is as much about family and faith as Signs was. Shyamalan is wise to trot out the playbook of that Mel Gibson vehicle, which succeeded by making its otherworldly invasion universally resonant. Knock doesn’t have popcorn-spilling jump scares. And its insistence on keeping bloodshed just outside the frame is puzzling, since it neither sets up some grandiose Shyamalanic twist nor secures the PG-13 rating that the majority of Shyamalan’s films have.

The film keeps you on its toes as it raises questions. Is Rupert Grint’s fiery Redmond really the guy who attacked Andrew in a bar years ago? Is young Wen’s (Kristen Cui) adorable nature shrouding some darkness within? Can this potentially revive appreciation for KC and the Sunshine Band’s “Boogie Shoes”?

Shyamalan has long teetered the line between A and B movies and when the star power is as modest as it is here, it’s especially tempting to define on which side of the line he’s operating. In the end, though, Knock acquits itself as solid entertainment, more thought-provoking and less terrible than most modern thrillers. It is a better movie than is expected of a mid-winter studio release.