From 1999 breakout hit The Sixth Sense to acclaimed followups including Signs, The Village and, most recently, 2021’s Old, Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan’s appetite for contemporary supernatural plots and surprise endings has invariably found an audience hungry for thought-provoking twistiness plot. Now in 2023, the filmmaker known professionally as M. Night Shyamalan returns with Knock At The Cabin, a psychological horror he wrote and directed.
An adaptation of Paul G. Tremblay’s 2018 novel, this bleak-toned, contemporary-set chiller centres around a family – preteen girl Wen (Kristen Cui) and her dads Andrew and Eric (Ben Aldridge and Jonathan Groff) – bonding at a remote lakeside holiday home. This enables vibes akin to Cabin Fever, Midsommar or Wrong Turn: when the knock at the cabin’s door comes, it’s from four armed individuals led by one Leonard (Guardians Of The Galaxy’s Dave Bautista) ready to hold the three hostage for reasons unfathomable to them. The world is about to end, insist the invaders, and the only way to stop this apocalypse is the voluntary death of one family member – their choice as to whom.
Why have this unassuming family been selected, then, and do they trust the motives of strangers who, having kept them captive, are unwilling to kill them themselves? Shyamalan leaves many questions unanswered, perhaps deliberately, but if one is comfortable with this film formula, then it is still a highly suspensive and engaging film, one with shocking scenes of violence. The cabin setting adds tension to every scene: there are intermittent moments of hope the captives will make it out alive, but Knock At The Cabin manages to maintain its flow amidst the wait for suspensive buildups.
As per usual, Shyamalan’s cinematography and storytelling are alluring, bohemian and inventive. Mulling the ethical conundrum at its core, his concocted scenario attempts to appeal to our sense of humanity and sacrifices for the greater good of mankind, or at least the questions around it. But it only becomes apparent towards the end of its 100-minute runtime as to whether the armed apocalypse-criers were telling the truth or not – and whether the climax was worth the buildup.
Dir: M. Night Shyamalan (15, 100 mins)
Knock At The Cabin is out now in cinemas
words ADAM MO ALI
Want more film?
Get reviews, previews, interviews, features and more, from Wales and beyond.