Knock at the Cabin (2023)
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
While vacationing at a remote cabin, a young girl and her two fathers are taken hostage by four armed strangers who demand that the family make an unthinkable choice to avert the apocalypse. With limited access to the outside world, the family must decide what they believe before all is lost.
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9 films that influenced Knock at the Cabin
What critics say influenced Knock at the Cabin
It’s weird, traumatic, and violent, borrowing ideas from “Knowing,” “10 Cloverfield Lane,” and “The Mist” as it explores thought-provoking themes of destruction, salvation, and sacrifice.
A surprising film this reminded me of was Alex Proyas’s “Knowing,” which also used visions and premonitions to build an apocalyptic narrative.
It’s weird, traumatic, and violent, borrowing ideas from “Knowing,” “10 Cloverfield Lane,” and “The Mist” as it explores thought-provoking themes of destruction, salvation, and sacrifice.
That allowed the story to stand more on its own than exist solely as a Shyamalan property, hitting a balance between Funny Games (2007) and 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016), particularly the latter in the big question of “Are these people full of shit?
Knock at the Cabin felt a lot like 10 Cloverfield Lane , since both were claustrophobic, locked-room films with an apocalyptic edge.
A guilty part of us might hope that this turns into Don’t Look Up or even Roland Emmerich’s 2012 , or even 10 Cloverfield Lane which used a similar sense of claustrophobia and guesswork.
The premise cannot help but sound like a more grounded version of Drew Goddard’s The Cabin in the Woods .
The novel this is based on, by Paul Tremblay, is called The Cabin at the End of the World, which is a much better title, and I suspect Shyamalan changed it because it brings too much to mind The Cabin in the Woods, a far, far, far superior movie, one that actually has a sense of humor about and a cinema-history perspective on the human obsession with apocalypses, one that actually grapples with that obsession.
Things get taken to a place that borders on exploitive, and I almost wish Shyamalan would have gone full-on John Carpenter (or even The Cabin in the Woods ) and went fully apocalyptic.
With his glory days ( The Sixth Sense ; Unbreakable ) now far into the rear-view mirror, the filmmaker continues his lower profile run of horror features ( The Visit ; Old ) as he attempts to go moderately progressive.
Since breaking in with “The Sixth Sense” in 1999, Shyamalan has largely made his buck with misdirection plot pivots that sometimes deliver (“Unbreakable” and “The Village”) and other times fall down woefully (“The Happening” and “Lady in the Water”).
A family must make a devastating choice in order to save the world in the fifteenth feature as director for filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan, whose many credits include The Sixth Sense , Signs , Unbreakable , and Split .
Unlike The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable , or any of the other films that built the Shyamalan brand, Knock at the Cabin announces its biggest twist right at the start.
This brand new by-the-numbers apocalyptic venture directed by M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, 1999; Unbreakable, 2000) comes with the seal of a self-important bore.
The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable: these were and remain dynamic, commanding works of cinema even without their twist endings; the twists only deepen their power.
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Like other works by M. Night, Knock at the Cabin does have some spiritual/religious undertones to its horror, as seen in Signs and his highly raved Apple TV+ series Servant .
A family must make a devastating choice in order to save the world in the fifteenth feature as director for filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan, whose many credits include The Sixth Sense , Signs , Unbreakable , and Split .
In response to an epochal event such as the attacks of 11 September 2001, director M. Night Shyamalan made films such as Signs, The Village and Lady in the Water, in which he proposed through allegory a lucid portrait of how the United States United (and the world) were reacting to this tragedy, giving voice to the fears that had arisen and suggesting some possible ways of healing.
Perhaps Mel Gibson said it best in Signs: "Swing away, Merrill."
Knock at the Cabin marks the triumphant comeback of M. Night Shyamalan, who possibly delivers his best film since Signs !
It’s a remarkably nuanced portrayal from a filmmaker not always known for his relatable characters; this is easily Shyamalan’s most human film since Signs.
A guilty part of us might hope that this turns into Don’t Look Up or even Roland Emmerich’s 2012 , or even 10 Cloverfield Lane which used a similar sense of claustrophobia and guesswork.
Thanks to the cinematographers Jarin Blacshke, who was previously Oscar-nominated for Robert Eggers’ “The Lighthouse” (2019), and Lowell A. Meyer, the movie seldom feels stiff or stuffy even though it mostly stays within its limited background, and the score by Herdís Stefánsdóttir is often striking whenever it needs to inject the sense of doom into the screen.
Knock at the Cabin is strategically shot by cinematographers Jarin Blaschke and Lowell A. Meyer, the former of which worked on The Witch , The Lighthouse , and The Northman with director Robert Eggers.
From mainstream comedies like The Birdcage to more aspirational indie efforts like The Kids Are All Right , there’s a disproportionate amount of time and effort placed in attempting to reassure straight audiences that there’s no need to feel “threatened” by these queer families.
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With his glory days ( The Sixth Sense ; Unbreakable ) now far into the rear-view mirror, the filmmaker continues his lower profile run of horror features ( The Visit ; Old ) as he attempts to go moderately progressive.
Continuing the career resurgence that began with 2015’s The Visit, M. Night Shyamalan delivers once again with Knock at the Cabin.
Will it be like the golden days of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable or Signs, will it be the dumpster fires of The Lady in the Water, The Happening, The Last Airbender, After Earth or The Visit or will it be interesting if flawed curiosities like The Village, Split or Glass.
M. Night Shyamalan’s filmography, despite uneven critical reception, has still felt consistently personal to him as a filmmaker Each of his high-concept genre films from the last decade has been infused with strong thematics: feelings of past regret in The Visit (2015), motivation or survival in Split (2017) or anxieties surrounding our bodies and the passage of time in Old (2021).
(In between there were more Shyamalan movies with twists: The Visit, Split.
Yet in 2015 and 2016, Shyamalan delivered back-to-back hits in The Visit and Split .