Knock at the Cabin
M. Night Shyamalan’s latest suspense thriller is a highly implausible thing wriggling uncomfortably within its own skin.
Armageddon time: Rupert Grint, Dave Bautista and Abby Quinn
The Prince of the High Concept is back with an idea too big for its britches. Within his chosen genre – the suspense thriller – M. Night Shyamalan is nothing if not original, but most of his films don’t really work. And his latest really is daft. The premise, a rumination on sacrifice and faith, beggars belief. It transpires that the future of mankind rests on the unsuspecting shoulders of two gay men and their adopted seven-year-old daughter. They’ve rented a cabin in the woods for a vacation, a trip that turns sour when Dave Bautista emerges from the trees. However, in spite of the former wrestler’s looming, intimidating presence and heavily tattooed body, this is meant to be a more caring, collegiate brand of Bautista, who claims he is a teacher from Chicago. He is accompanied by a nurse, a cook and the employee of a gas company, the last named played by a grizzled Rupert Grint. They claim that they mean no harm to Andrew (Ben Aldridge), Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Wen (Kristen Cui), but break down their door and tie them up. They then ask the trio to sacrifice one of its own, in order to prevent the coming Apocalypse.
Many of M. Night Shyamalan’s movies are a waiting game, concepts biding their time to unleash their sting; some proving more successful than others. Here, little makes sense, not least the strangers’ methods of clarification. Every time Andrew and Eric refuse their imminent sacrifice, the strangers club to death a member of their own quartet, using their makeshift handheld weapons. If you are going to try and convince a human rights attorney (Aldridge) that the world is about to end, this is a very odd way of going about it. Periodically, Leonard (Bautista) flicks on the TV news to show the devastation happening around the planet, including an outbreak of a virus in Suffolk (poor old Suffolk). Andrew, being the brightest in the room, suspects that the news reports have been fabricated, and isn’t about to kill either his daughter or his husband. Meanwhile, we are left wondering why the intruders are so stupid or if, maybe, the news reports are genuine. And it’s a long wait.
Knock at the Cabin might have worked as a suspense thriller had there been some suspense, instead of a mounting sense of irritation. 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. Sadly, Shyamalan saves his best trick for the end (which he so often does), but it’s really not worth the wait. The best one can say about it is that it provides the British actors Ben Aldridge, Nikki Amuka-Bird and Rupert Grint a decent platform on which to show off their American accents.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Kristen Cui, Abby Quinn, Rupert Grint.
Dir M. Night Shyamalan, Pro M. Night Shyamalan, Marc Bienstock and Ashwin Rajan, Screenplay M. Night Shyamalan, Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman, from the novel The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul G. Tremblay, Ph Jarin Blaschke and Lowell A. Meyer, Pro Des Naaman Marshall, Ed Noemi Katharina Preiswerk, Music Herdís Stefánsdóttir, Costumes Caroline Duncan.
Blinding Edge Pictures/FilmNation Entertainment/Wishmore Entertainment-Universal Pictures.
100 mins. USA. 2023. UK and US Rel: 3 February 2023. Cert. 15.
