M. Night Shyamalan makes first okay film in a decade!

Knock at the Cabin (M. Night Shyamalan, 2023)

No 21st-century Hollywood director has hit more consistent highs than M. Night Shyamalan. Ever since his 1999 breakthrough The Sixth Sense, he has managed only one flat-out airdale, 2010's dreary The Last Airbender, and two middling vehicles, Signs (2002) and After Earth (2013). Every other damn title (and this includes his excellent Apple TV series Servant) has proven chef's-kiss-plus. Sadly, though, Knock at the Cabin is his first merely okay film in a decade. 

Based on Paul G. Tremblay's 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World, Knock at the Cabin starts fresh with precious little exposition in that inimitable Shyamalan fashion. A group of four creepy weapon-wielding figures descends upon Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge), a couple enjoying a bucolic vacation in a cabin in the Pennsylvania woods with their seven-year-old daughter Wen (Kristen Cui). Despite being led by the intimidating Leonard (Dave Bautista, muscling in on Dwayne Johnson's [and John Cena's?] territory), the group claims that they are actually there to save the world. All four have seen visions that predict a series of earth-ending catastrophes that can be avoided only if one family member kills another. Naturally, Eric and Andrew don't believe them even with some possibly prerecorded or falsified news reports about earthquakes and a deadly virus on the television. Most of the narrative tension derives from the question of whether Leonard and company are telling the truth or are subjugating the family to a sick game, a tension exacerbated by the suspicion that the group may be emissaries from a homophobic suicide cult. 

Shyamalan keeps the excitement levels on overdrive through the very last scene. And all the performances, especially Aldridge's rage-filled Andrew, are superlative. The problem is that, for once in Shyamalan's filmography, the twist is that there is no twist. Not that his films live or die with mere clever gotchas as more savvy audiences know. But the straightforwardness of the conceit here deprives Shyamalan of his trademark complex metanarratives. One might chalk up this relative drabness to the fact that he's adapting a story instead of an original screenplay. But that didn't prevent Old (2021), based on Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters' graphic novel Sandcastle, from joining the ranks of his toppermost outings. Knock at the Cabin makes you think about its particular story, its detours and plot holes and philosophical conundrums, rather than storytelling or filmmaking itself as Shyamalan's best films do. Once it's over, it's over - an economy-size, easily digested genre pic. And that places it at the level of typical Hollywood fodder, an echelon Shyamalan usually transcends.

Grade: B+