GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★★☆ (3.8/5)
Rated: M
Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
Screenplay by: M. Night Shyamalan and Steve Desmond & Michael Sherman
Based on the book: The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay
Produced by: M. Night Shyamalan, Marc Bienstock, Ashwin Rajan
Starring: Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Kristen Cui, Abby Quinn and Rupert Grint.
‘It’s time.’
There’s always the mystery, the waiting for the twist with M. Night Shyamalan movies – here, it felt like Shyamalan holding his nerve while adding touches, echoes of his previous films: the creaking of trees as the wind shifts through them while the characters wait and watch to see what monster will slowly come into view.
Instead of monsters, four people emerge. But it’s Leonard (Dave Bautista) who first introduces himself to young Wen (Kristen Cui). She’s catching crickets.
‘I’m just going to learn about you a little,’ she says.
Leonard helps. He’s good at catching crickets.
They’re going to be friends.
Until his three colleagues show themselves: Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Adriane (Abby Quinn) and Redmond (Rupert Grint).
They’re holding weapons made from axes and sledge hammers.
Wen gets scared and runs back to the cabin, back to her two dads, Daddy Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and Daddy Eric (William Ragsdale). They’re a loving family. Andrew and Eric promise each other to always be together, no matter what.
So when Leonard and his colleagues tell them they have to make a terrible choice to stop the apocalypse, they will always choose their family.
Even if the intruders say they have the most important job in the world.
Are they ‘Jehovah witnesses?’ asks Ben.
Knock at the Cabin is a serious film, with brutal and bloody moments. The opening of sketches of crows and screaming faces. But the tension is offset with light moments like these doomsayer’s wielding weapons being possibly Jehovah witnesses.
Not laugh at loud funny, but light.
The impending doom and the bloody is also a contrast to flashbacks to family: the love, the honesty; when Andrew and Eric first met Wen.
It’s genuinely sweet and adds weight to the choice they refuse to make.
The pacing of the story shows restraint making this one of Shyamalan’s better quality films.
It’s a deceptively simple structure, most of the film set within the cabin, that builds just the right amount of tension while playing with expectation.
The delivery was there to support the idea of the story: not too funny, nor too violent, or too caught up in the drama of the family, just light touches to suspend the reality of the extreme premise of ordinary people faced with the idea of the world ending.