While enjoying a quiet vacation in their remote cabin in the woods, a family’s life is about to become a dreadful nightmare when four strangers come knocking in M. Night Shyamalan’s horror/thriller Knock at the Cabin.
The movie opens with a young girl named Wen (Kristen Cui) collecting grasshoppers just outside her family’s cabin. A large, imposing man named Leonard (Dave Bautista) walks out of the woods and begins talking to her. At first, Wen is shy and uneasy about talking to Leonard because he’s a stranger, but Wen starts to relax and chat with him when he shows her he’s very good at catching grasshoppers. Leonard tells Wen that his heart is breaking because of what he and his three companions must do and that she needs to convince her two dads to let them into the cabin.
Immediately frightened, Wen runs into the cabin and tells her two dads, Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge), about the man and that they need to make him go away.
Leonard and his three companions – Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Ardiane (Abby Quinn), and Redmond (Rupert Grint) – begin knocking heavily at the cabin door, with Leonard telling Eric and Andrew that they must let them in because he has something significant to talk to them about. Wen’s two dads try the phones to call for help but discover the phone lines have been cut, and they have no cell service. It’s not long before Leonard and his comrades break into the cabin and tie Eric and Andrew to chairs while Wen cries and whimpers in fear.
Leonard tells them he and his comrades are not here to hurt them. Throughout history, families have been chosen to make the decision that they now face. “Your family must choose to willingly sacrifice one of the three of you to prevent the apocalypse,” says Leonard.
Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, Knock at the Cabin is a disturbing, gloomy, clunky apocalyptic thriller with little character development and even less suspense. Even worse, it’s missing Shyamalan’s signature style of clever foreshadowing and building tension.
Dave Bautista delivers the best performance in the film as Leonard, the physically intimidating leader of the four messengers of death. Leonard is actually a caring, desperate, and gentle soul who hates the horror he must put the family through but is determined to try and stop the apocalypse. The opening scene between Bautista and young Cui as Wen is the best scene in the movie.
The rest of the cast deliver solid performances, but their characters are never given any real depth or personality; they are all one-dimensional, uninteresting, and even boring.
Another big problem with the film is that it just keeps going down the Biblical End of Days rabbit hole, with the ending becoming painfully obvious and anti-climactic.
Missing any genuine suspense or engaging characters, Knock at the Cabin is a forgettable and disappointing addition to the lengthy list of films by M. Night Shyamalan.
GRADE: C-
MPAA Rating: R for violence and language
Running Time: 1 hour 40 minutes
Release Date: February 3, 2023
