In the opening scene of the film Knock at the Cabin, Kristen Cui plays Wen, a young girl of seven years old who is seen collecting grasshoppers in front of a cabin in the middle of the woods. She stealthily approaches the insects as she takes them in her hands and places them in her jar, ensuring that none of the insects already within the jar escape in the process. She then reassures the grasshoppers that she will not harm them and wishes to observe them for a while before returning the jar’s lid to its secure position and twisting it on tightly.
On the one hand, it’s easy to see this moment as M. Night Shyamalan stating that he is the watcher of this world that he is putting before the audience, putting all of these characters into a jar and studying what happens when they all get together. M. Night Shyamalan directed and also co-wrote the screenplay with Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman, based on Paul G. Tremblay’s book, The Cabin at the End of the World. But if we zoom out a little further, we can see that this scene more likely symbolizes Shyamalan’s perspective of a higher power. In whatever form the concept of God may take, God can appear like a child playing with his bugs, testing them, and watching the reactions they produce. There is always a remote possibility that someone outside the jar could intervene, but they never do. Instead, they watch how the organisms inside the jar respond to the challenges that have been presented to them.
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In a way, M. Night Shyamalan almost uses Knock at the Cabin to explore themes he’s played with before with varying degrees of success. These themes include faith (Signs, The Village), and the ignorance of avoiding the truth about the destruction of the world when the evidence is there. In other words, Knock at the Cabin is almost used to explore themes that Shyamalan has played with before (The Happening). However, keeping the action confined to this cabin in the woods plays to Shyamalan’s strengths. This is because he is typically at his creative peak when he is putting his characters in claustrophobic and constrained circumstances (Signs showed us an alien invasion mostly from the viewpoint of a house in the middle of nowhere, while Shyamalan also came up with the story for Devil, which took place entirely in an elevator). Knock at the Cabin, which features a blend of Shyamalan’s interests and strengths, is one of the better pictures in the director’s extensive résumé. This is even though Shyamalan can surely be hit-or-miss in his work.
When Wen is gathering her grasshoppers, she runs into Leonard, played by Dave Bautista. Despite his hesitant and slightly afraid demeanour, Leonard is intrinsically threatening because Dave Bautista plays him. Leonard informs Wen that he intends to see her two fathers, Eric (played by Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge), to have a very important conversation with them. Wen flees to her parents, who make a vain attempt to prevent Leonard and his accomplices (Nikkie Amuka-Bird, Abby Quinn, and Rupert Grint) from entering the cabin by barricading the entrance. However, their efforts are unsuccessful. Once inside, Leonard explains the reason that he and these three other people are here: they have seen a vision of destruction that will lead to the end of the world, and the only way to halt the end of the world is for Eric, Andrew, or Wen to commit themselves voluntarily.
This scenario is even more unsettling because Leonard and his team do not want to do this to this family, but they are pushed by some incredible power to carry out such heinous crimes. This makes the situation even more unsettling. They don’t want to break up this family, and they don’t want to force them to make such a terrible decision, but their conviction has left them with no other choice. They don’t want to do either of those things. Even if just one member of this family survives, the rest of them will eventually perish.
Shyamalan has always been a master of spatial horror; he knows how to play with the confines of a location to achieve the most amount of fear possible. Consider how Haley Joel Osment’s character, Cole, from The Sixth Sense hid in his red tent before discovering he wasn’t alone inside, or how unsettling it was when an extraterrestrial was seen walking past on a home recording in the movie Signs. Given that there is only one setting and a tiny group of characters, this picture feels like one of M. Night Shyamalan’s films, which is the most tightly wound it has been in quite some time. Shyamalan is terrific when limits are put into place.
It has also been fascinating to see Shyamalan, both in this film and in Old, attempt to retell well-known tales while incorporating his own unique perspective into the narrative. Knock at the Cabin doesn’t have the typical “Shyamalan twist,” and it alters certain aspects of the original book. Still, it does feel like a smart combination of the original idea and Shyamalan’s tone, which work quite well together. This is because Knock at the Cabin is a smart combination of the original idea and Shyamalan’s tone. The only time that Knock at the Cabin struggles with this story is its approach to queerness. The movie occasionally brings up the idea that these visitors could just be bigots exacting revenge on these two parents, even though this is more of a rationalization of these actions rather than a real possibility. This is the only time that Knock at the Cabin struggles with this story.
However, the success of this premise can be attributed to how well Shyamalan’s ensemble can sell this idea. The performance Bautista gives as Leonard, a schoolteacher who is aware of the terrible effect he is having on this family but is doing it nonetheless because he knows that not doing it will just make things worse is fantastic. As a result of Leonard and his group’s unwavering commitment to the truth of their ideals, we can feel compassion for them even though they are acting morally reprehensible manner. This may be Bautista’s best role to date; it’s certainly a performance demonstrating the range of feelings he can convey in every scene. He plays a gentle giant who struggles with his decisions throughout the narrative but is aware that he is committing a necessary evil.
Eric and Andrew are also essential to the success of this story since they both symbolize the dichotomy in ideas that would make this scenario even more challenging. Both of these characters are essential to the success of this story. The character of Eric, played by Jonathan Groff, quickly begins to open himself up to the notion that these invaders are telling the truth, as their initial unwillingness to sacrifice a member of their family results in a tremendous earthquake, which is followed by a tsunami that devastates the globe. However, Ben Aldridge’s Andrew is certain in his conviction that all of this must be an elaborate hoax and that it is impossible to rescue the world by taking another person’s life, especially of someone he cares strongly about. Shyamalan utilizes these two characters as a commentary on our world: some people can see the facts and the reality and recognize that something needs to change, while others can see the writing on the wall and make excuses for why they don’t need to change.
The sacrifice in many ways reminds us of Abraham attempting to sacrifice his son Isaac, and the four intruders cannot help but feel like Biblical messengers, heralding their actions will bring about the end of times. Knock at the Cabin feels like Shyamalan’s biggest dissection of faith in years, as the sacrifice does in many ways, remind us of Abraham attempting to sacrifice his son Isaac. Knock at the Cabin can get away with exploring this topic, even though Shyamalan has shown an interest in it in the past. Additionally, the film does so without appearing overly preachy about the significance of having faith. In the world of COVID, it is easy to see Knock at the Cabin as a reminder of how people can choose to ignore the signs and attempt to live their lives without any interference, content to rationalize their viewpoint even as the world crumbles around them. This is something that can be seen quite easily in the film Knock at the Cabin.
However, at its very core, Knock at the Cabin is successful since it is reminiscent of the early days of Shyamalan, when he felt like the next coming of Alfred Hitchcock. His films would have the audience talking for days after seeing them. It’s hard to watch Knock at the Cabin without getting a jolt of a reminder of why Shyamalan felt so important in the first place, and how exciting it could be to watch one of his films. Even though Knock at the Cabin isn’t necessarily up to the standards of Shyamalan in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it’s hard to watch Knock at the Cabin and not get a jolt of a reminder of why Knock at the Cab.
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