Performances Shine In Shyamalan’s ‘Knock At The Cabin’
When I got into the theater last night to see Knock at the Cabin the first thing I noticed was the omnipresence of the advertisement. There seemed to be posters on nearly every surface, the bar had inserts reminding you the signature drink of Knock at the Cabin is Angry Orchard Hard Cider and the screening was packed. M. Night Shyamalan films have varied wildly in quality over the years but he certainly knows how to pack a theater.
Knock at the Cabin comes out of the gate pretty strange. We are introduced to Wen (a dynamite performance from Kristen Cui) and Leonard (a surprisingly gentle Dave Bautista) catching grasshoppers together in some supremely beautiful woods. Things sour when Leonard’s colleagues make themselves known and scare Wen back into the cabin.
What follows is absolute banana pancakes chaos, as Leonard and his four associates break into the cabin and proceed to subdue Wen’s fathers and explain that one of them has to die or the apocalypse will happen. This, as one might anticipate, goes over about as well as something like that could, which is to say not very well at all.
Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldrige are excellent and their performances really make up the emotional core of this story. Their love is so big and their desire to protect it is so fierce that it often sucks the air out of the cabin. Their story is shown through flashbacks that really evolve into a parallel narrative and all you want is to help make everything OK for them. Dave Bautista’s performance is maybe his best to date. His colleagues reek of desperation in a way that is equal parts threatening and endearing.
That said, regrettably, good performances do not always a great movie make. There are a couple of slower sequences that could easily be tightened and some of Shyamalan’s more unfortunate fingerprints are visible (including a gratuitous cameo from the man himself). The characters, while well acted, sometimes feel very shallow,
It’s more thriller than straight up horror with some wild doomsday cult undertones. There are scenes of mass and personal distress, tragedies beyond comprehension. The kid feels like a real kid, the world feels believable and it’s genuinely touching to watch our main characters fight like hell.
All told Knock at the Cabin (Universal Pictures; R; 1hr 40mins) is better than I expected and a pretty well-rounded apocalypse thriller, which wins it a 3.5 out of 5.
One thing I will let you know off the bat is that this film depicts an anti-queer hate crime. If that’s going to be intense for you, I may sit this one out or wait for a VOD release.
