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M. Night Shyamalan should probably just stay away from the apocalypse. Who could forget the baffling events of his global warming horror “The Happening,” aptly represented by a scene in which a character just lays down in front of a moving lawn mower? Or what about “ After Earth ,” which made a box office bomb out of a sci-fi movie starring Will Smith and his son Jaden Smith ? There’s something about the end of the world that fascinates Shyamalan—as a sentimental moralist, an overzealous twister, and a button-pusher—there’s also something that always foils him. His latest, “Knock at the Cabin,” uses the question of human behavior during the threat of end times to create a morality study that progressively hollows itself out. It’s another minor work from a director whose films, especially after “After Earth,” have been mostly major.

It’s a shame that the story isn’t so good, because the film has a rich and earthy Kodak-shot presentation from co-cinematographers Jarin Blaschke (“ The Lighthouse ”) and Lowell A. Meyer (“ Thunder Road ”), who turn many scenes of characters standing in mostly the same living room into striking studies of pleading faces in close-up. It looks about as realized as a movie like this could be. And the performances have enough uniform intensity, even when the writing is only playing games. It’s a striking ensemble piece by design, and creates some promise early on, but Shyamalan’s larger intent doesn’t give “Knock at the Cabin” nearly enough resonance.

The standout performance comes from Dave Bautista , in his most tatted-up teddy bear mode possible, wearing glasses like he did in “ Blade Runner 2049 ” to suggest the gentle boy inside his grizzly physique. For a movie about how humans choose to interact with one another, his acting is incredibly disarming here and sometimes moving in how he chooses to speak so gently while enacting a plan filled with the unthinkable. His character Leonard is a second-grade teacher from Chicago who has united with three other people (played by Rupert Grint , Abby Quinn , and Nikki Amuka-Bird ) who have also had life-changing visions of the apocalypse. They approach a cabin in the woods with sharp weapons in hand, and they do not want to hurt the people inside. But they will enact the violence that they feel they must.

The targeted family is that of young Wen ( Kristen Cui ) and her two dads, Eric ( Jonathan Groff ) and Andrew ( Ben Aldridge ). They do not know why they have been chosen, but it does not matter. Tied up in chairs before their weapon-wielding captors, they must decide to kill one of their family of three to stop an impending apocalypse. They cannot kill themselves, and if they reject their captors’ prospect, something awful will happen in the cabin, and a plague will be unleashed. The first time Eric and Andrew effusively say no, towering tsunamis are conjured, and deadly earthquakes ensue.

Are Leonard and his friends onto something, or is this all a coincidence? Is it manipulation? There may be no force more powerful on this earth than belief. It can be a tool that builds communities or a weapon that destroys lives; a movie like “Knock at the Cabin” needs to wriggle in that magnanimous uncertainty of belief, and instead, it only sits and admires it. It’s like presenting QAnon devotees and people who think the Earth is flat as possibly being right, for the sake of both sides-ism. Shyamalan isn't nudging about a divided people (like Jordan Peele's “ Us ,” which echoes through the woods of this movie), but lazily stirring the fear of conspiracy.

Cut back to us, well aware that our collective brains are broken, waiting for a larger point: we are stuck with a frustrating and self-serious movie that kneels before its zealousness but also continually emphasizes why Leonard and the others would sow skepticism. The script carefully doles out information about everyone to toy with coincidence and happenstance, but it's more stirring, less building. Shyamalan does not have the nuance to handle this idea, as confirmed when his expected twist comes minutes before the end.

Even with these sharp weapons, bizarre motivations, and that whole apocalypse thing, “Knock at the Cabin” lacks a key squeamish element. Not that the movie needs gore, but the threat of violence in this immediate scenario is specifically numbed by cutaways; for a story pitched in the human capacity to recognize another’s life value, there just isn’t the terror that could create some of its emotional stakes. The lack of it is deeply felt once it becomes apparent what monsters this movie is and isn’t dealing with, while showing how these people are driven by something that forces them to do awful things. Instead, “Knock at the Cabin” creates one anticlimax after another.

The script, co-written by Shyamalan, Steve Desmond , and Michael Sherman (adapting Paul Tremblay's book The Cabin at the End of the World ), does better in making us worry for the targeted family. During this present-day stress, "Knock at the Cabin" cuts back and forth between the love story of Eric and Andrew, and their life with adopted daughter Wen. Groff and Aldridge are heartbreaking as they slowly become opposites: Aldridge embodies one’s tough exterior against a threatening world, while Groff gradually depicts the journey of seeing the light. Together, they show the pain of possibly making The Choice, and how Eric and Andrew don’t want to in part because of their deep love for each other. They also help provide more substance to the film’s representation of a same-sex married couple, which on one hand, more of this please, but on the other hand, still feels like major studio productions have a lot more work to do.

“Knock at the Cabin” has glimmers of interest as a parable about people trying to preserve all of humanity: not just the population, but the concept. The work of Leonard and co. is something like a promotion of empathy, though as is often said about faith: it's the messengers who need work. By trying to make a grand statement to a post-lockdown theatergoing audience about what they are willing to believe—but also about how far they are willing to go for others—Shyamalan trips over himself and neglects to give them much of a movie.

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Nick Allen is the former Senior Editor at RogerEbert.com and a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film credits.

Knock at the Cabin (2023)

Rated R for violence and language.

100 minutes

Jonathan Groff as Eric

Ben Aldridge as Andrew

Kristen Cui as Wen

Dave Bautista as Leonard

Rupert Grint as Redmond

Nikki Amuka-Bird as Sabrina

Abby Quinn as Adriane

M. Night Shyamalan

Writer (based on the book "The Cabin at the End of the World" by)

Paul Tremblay
Steve Desmond
Michael Sherman

Cinematographer

Jarin Blaschke
Lowell A. Meyer
Noemi Preiswerk
Herdís Stefánsdóttir

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‘Knock at the Cabin’ Review: Who’s There? The Apocalypse.

In M. Night Shyamalan’s latest thought experiment, Dave Bautista brings the end of the world to a peaceful country cottage.

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In a scene from the film, a muscular man with tattooed arms stands with two other people in a room in a wood cabin.

By A.O. Scott

A little girl, out collecting grasshoppers in the forest, meets someone who might be described — if this were a picture book — as a friendly giant. His huge arms are covered in tattoos, and his demeanor walks a fine line between gentle and fearsome.

His name is Leonard, and his new acquaintance, just about to turn 8, is called Wen. Since this is a movie by M. Night Shyamalan — and a pretty good one, all things considered — a sinister vibe creeps in around the edges of their first encounter. The colors are uncannily bright, the close-up shots unnervingly angled (Jarin Blaschke and Lowell A. Meyer are responsible for the 35-millimeter cinematography). The music (by Herdis Stefansdottir) hums with menace. Something scary is about to happen.

What happens is a version of what former philosophy students and debate-happy internet smarties will recognize as the Trolley Problem , a chestnut of hypothetical ethical disputation. Would you, the classic version goes, run over one person with a trolley if doing so meant you could save five people on the other track? The variation that Leonard (Dave Bautista) proposes to Wen (Kristen Cui) and her family is at once grander and more intimate. Would you sacrifice yourself or someone you loved to prevent a global apocalypse?

Think fast! But don’t, maybe, think too hard about the premise and the narrative scaffolding of this itchy, claustrophobic, metaphysical thriller, which Shyamalan adapted (with Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman) from a novel by Paul Tremblay . Leonard is accompanied by three other believers in his end-times scenario: Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Adriane (Abby Quinn) and Redmond (Rupert Grint). Strangers until very recently, they received identical visions of flood, plague and darkness. They believe this cascade of catastrophes will come to pass unless Wen or one of her dads, Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge), volunteers to die.

Why them? Is it because Eric and Andrew are a gay couple, or because they happen to have rented an unlucky vacation property? Surely not the first thing: Sabrina insists on behalf of the group that “we don’t have a homophobic bone in our bodies.” Even if that doesn’t turn out to be true (Redmond has some ugliness in his back story), the real estate seems like a more plausible explanation. The movie is called “Knock at the Cabin” (the book is called “The Cabin at the End of the World”), and the house, with its remote location, floor-to-ceiling bookcases, dark wood paneling and deep cellar, looks like a perfect place to host a horror movie.

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Knock at the Cabin Reviews

“Knock at the Cabin” is a dumb story, but if there is any suspension of disbelief, it will be because the cast does their best to sell this Rube Goldbergian contrivance.

Full Review | Jun 2, 2024

With the help of a superb cast led by the phenomenal Dave Bautista - career-best performance - the filmmaker explores the emotional complexity found in the profound moral dilemmas placed upon human beings when faced with life-and-death decisions.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jul 25, 2023

"Knock at the Cabin" is a well-made movie, and there's not a bad performance in the entire film. But Bautista steals the show...

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Family and the bond it forms is in full focus in Knock at the Cabin, set against the backdrop of unexplainable beliefs and “Boogie Shoes” by KC and the Sunshine Band.

Knock At The Cabin is FANTASTIC. Top tier M Night Shyamalan that reminded me of why I love him as a filmmaker. Dave Bautista is PHENOMENAL & brings such humanity to a film that genuinely is the definition of life flashing before your eyes.

Knock at the Cabin is a tense thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat with it's unique premise, and impress you with it's cinematography and performances. The outcome may be a little lacklustre, but the journey is well-crafted.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 24, 2023

Knock at the Cabin is middle-of-the-road fare for Shyamalan. It doesn’t reach his directorial heights, but is well above his lows. If nothing else, it’s still refreshing to see a director consistently swinging for the fences.

Full Review | Jul 24, 2023

Knock at the Cabin isn’t completely fruitless, however it’s also unremarkable.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 23, 2023

Even though his spiritual successor, Jordan Peele, is reaching for the A-plus B movie torch, Night remains the industry standard.

Full Review | Jul 21, 2023

Knock at the Cabin marks M. Night Shyamalan’s return to form.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jul 19, 2023

For his whole career Shyamalan has crafted original tales and thrown them into the toilet. Now he takes somebody else's pointed, original terror and flushes it entirely with the kind of alterations that shows how little he understood about the book.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jun 13, 2023

By completely dismantling and radically reworking the third act, Shyamalan has ended up with a film that leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | May 24, 2023

You almost always have to decide if you’re willing to accept the obvious problems in [Shyamalan's] movies in order to also get the truly great stuff.

Full Review | Apr 21, 2023

As much as Shyamalan tries to cloak Knock at the Cabin’s central conflict in metaphysical horror and familial crisis, disbelief persists: The viewer is always aware that they are watching another trite and incurious M. Night Shyamalan film.

Full Review | Apr 18, 2023

A remarkably tense thriller with a killer premise placing the fate of humanity in the hands of one family. If it’s not Shyamalan’s best film, it’s undoubtedly in his top three.

Full Review | Original Score: 9.5/10 | Apr 16, 2023

Shyamalan's obsession with the macabre, the weird and the disconcerting has turned him easily hooked to good premises that blur once you try to develop them. Dave Bautista is an incredible actor. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Apr 10, 2023

A movie with high stakes, but small horrors.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 7, 2023

Fans of the book will note that there will be a different ending. M Night Shyamalan is not Frank Darabont and does not yet have the directing gravitas to pull off that ending. In this current emotional atmosphere, it wouldn’t have been the right time.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 18, 2023

M. Night Shyamalan doesn’t reveal his hand until the very end. And then the discussion begins. Like so many of his films, “Knock at the Cabin” prompts many more questions than it answers.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 15, 2023

Shymalan’s latest is compellingly perverse and wracked with a real sense of menace, making its hopeful denouement something of a betrayal.

Full Review | Mar 6, 2023

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‘Knock at the Cabin’ Review: No Surprise, M. Night Shyamalan’s Latest Is Long, Slow and Disappointing

The 'Sixth Sense' director has resuscitated his career more times than most, but this latest supernatural thriller feels like a tired remix of letdowns like 'Signs' and 'The Happening.'

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

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The twist in M. Night Shyamalan ’s latest film comes at the beginning, not the end. The trouble with that arrangement is that a career of surprise-ending films, such as “The Sixth Sense” and “Signs,” has conditioned audiences to expect something juicy to be revealed at the eleventh hour, by which point, this apocalyptic head-scratcher has already played its hand.

Reviewed at AMC The Grove, Los Angeles, Jan. 31, 2023. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 100 MIN.

Production: A Universal Pictures release and presentation of a Blinding Edge Pictures production, in association with FilmNation Features, Wishmore Entertainment. Producers: M. Night Shyamalan, Marc Bienstock, Ashwin Rajan. Executive producers: Steven Schneider, Christos V. Konstantakopoulos, Ashley Fox.
Crew: Director: M. Night Shyamalan. Screenplay: M. Night Shyamalan, Steve Desmond & Michael Sherman, based on the book “The Cabin at the End of the World” written by Paul Tremblay. Camera: Jarin Blaschke, Lowell A. Meyer. Editor: Noëmi Preiswerk. Music: Herdis Stefandottir.
With: David Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Kristen Cui, Abby Quinn, Rupert Grint.

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Knock at the Cabin First Reviews: Dave Bautista Shines in M. Night Shyamalan's Tense, Character-Driven Thriller

Critics say this is a return to form for shyamalan, who makes use of a chilling atmosphere and top-notch acting to bolster a somewhat understated story..

TAGGED AS: First Reviews , movies

When M. Night Shymalan comes knocking, fans of twisty thrillers answer. The writer and director’s latest, Knock at the Cabin , should be met by his usual crowd, given that its premise contains yet another suspenseful scenario. In the movie, four strangers show up at a family’s cabin claiming that the end of the world is near. Only one thing will keep the apocalypse from happening, but it’s a solution that brings a great moral dilemma. Initial reviews of Knock at the Cabin are mostly positive, and one thing is clear: Shyamalan is still great at creating a chilling atmosphere, and Dave Bautista’s performance is remarkable.

Here’s what critics are saying about Knock at the Cabin :

Is Shyamalan back in peak form?

With his latest film Knock at the Cabin , Shyamalan has delivered his best film in years. – Dan Bayer, Next Best Picture

Knock at the Cabin is close to a return to form for Shyamalan. If it’s not on the level of his very best, it shows that he’s still got it. – Joey Magidson, Awards Radar

It’s a well-crafted, suspenseful piece of filmmaking that shows off Shyamalan’s still formidable skills. – Cary Darling, Houston Chronicle

The film is Shyamalan at his most restrained and deliberate. – Sam Stone, CBR

It might be his most technically impressive film thus far, even if it’s not his most narratively exciting one. – Hoai-Tran Bui, Inverse

Shyamalan’s working somewhere near the height of his powers to remind us all that there’s more to him than twist endings. – Charles Pulliam-Moore, The Verge

Knock at the Cabin has already been hailed in some quarters as Shyamalan’s return to form. That said, those filmgoers previously irritated by his propensity for mystical woo will probably still come away disappointed. – Jason Best, What to Watch

Dave Bautista in Knock at the Cabin (2023)

(Photo by ©Universal Pictures)

How does Knock at the Cabin compare to his other movies?

With his latest, Knock at the Cabin , he may have finally made a film that ranks with his best work. – Cary Darling, Houston Chronicle

Shyamalan’s latest cinematic confrontation with mortality and meaning, Knock at the Cabin , is among his best work. – Chase Hutchinson, Seattle Times

I don’t think Knock at the Cabin is one of M. Night Shyamalan’s best films to date, but it’s firmly in the category right below that. It’s solid. – Germain Lussier, io9.com

Knock At The Cabin , while a relatively minor feature, is Shyamalan’s most effective effort since The Village . – Kyle Pinion, Screen Rex

There are elements of greatness, such as Shyamalan’s ability to tell a scary global phenomenon from the perspective of one family (much like he did in Signs). – Jonathan Sim, ComingSoon.net

What works best in the movie?

You can tell [Shyamalan] is getting back to basics though with Knock at the Cabin , stripping down spectacle to lean into an impossible premise. – Joey Magidson, Awards Radar

The empathy it displays toward all of its characters marks it as one of the few apocalyptic dramas to earn its enduring faith in humanity. – Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

One of Shyamalan’s touchstones as a horror storyteller is his sincerity… Shyamalan’s adoration for the dads and their sweetly introverted daughter is evidenced by scenes of genuine tenderness. – David Sims, The Atlantic

Shyamalan lets loose a little… As a showcase for Shyamalan’s evolving abilities as a filmmaker, it does a great job. – Hoai-Tran Bui, Inverse

The direction is taut, the action attractively lensed, yet it’s the unusual ensemble of actors that really wins you over. – Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, metro.co.uk

Knock At The Cabin does not waste any time getting into the nitty-gritty of it all. Within minutes, Dave Bautista is already tromping through the woods to get to the cabin, and things only get more intense from there. – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

Dave Bautista, Abby Quinn, and Nikki Amuka-Bird in Knock at the Cabin (2023)

(Photo by Phobymo/©Universal Pictures)

Is it scary?

Shyamalan has found his groove again, popping off one squirm-in-your-seat, bite-your-nails moment after another. – Dan Bayer, Next Best Picture

The film itself never gets scary. It is more a thriller that will have you wondering what is and isn’t real. – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

[It] becomes less of a thriller than an unorthodox character study, especially as the film’s expertly deployed use of flashback slowly forms the emotional core of the story. – Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

The filmmaker prefers to cut away or frame deaths off-screen, a move that winds up minimizing the impact of the stakes when the film rarely leaves the cabin or its handful of characters. – Megan Navarro, Bloody Disgusting

It’s ultimately satisfactory entertainment for horror fans who don’t want to see anything too disturbing on screen. – Carla Hay, Culture Mix

How is the cast?

While all the cast give strong performances, it is Bautista who shines and shows his range in some key monologues. – Chase Hutchinson, Seattle Times

Bautista is the stand-out, granting Leonard a sense of calm that is at once friendly and deeply unsettling. – Dan Bayer, Next Best Picture

Bautista walks away with the film, giving incredible pathos to what could have felt like a villainous character. – Joey Magidson, Awards Radar

The role of Leonard is perfectly suited to the wrestler-turned-actor. As a fundamentally sympathetic antagonist, Bautista digs deeper into the timid sincerity and striking naivete already present in his Guardians of the Galaxy role. – Clarisse Loughrey, Independent

Bautista is fantastic… You believe that he believes what he says, which makes some moments all the more terrifying. – Matt Rodriguez, Shakefire

Grint especially, as the jittery, hotheaded wild card, nearly steals the scenes from Bautista a few times. – Hoai-Tran Bui, Inverse

Kristen Cui is the standout here. She is absolutely phenomenal… She is going places. – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

Kristen Cui in Knock at the Cabin (2023)

How does it compare to the book?

It’s purer now, whittled down to its ideological bones. – Clarisse Loughrey, Independent

If you have read the book, we can all but guarantee you will like that ending better, so don’t expect this changed version of the story to blow your minds. – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

[Shyamalan] has changed one plot point from the novel that changes the tone of the story’s ending in a way that… the film’s climax doesn’t feel entirely as earned. – Dan Bayer, Next Best Picture

It’s easy to see why the filmmakers chose to make these changes because there are many things in the book that would not be as “crowd-pleasing” to movie audiences. – Carla Hay, Culture Mix

Should we expect a twist?

Shyamalan hasn’t added one, allowing the whole film to play as straightforwardly as possible, much to the film’s credit. – Dan Bayer, Next Best Picture

The most suspenseful and intense moments come when we feel that the twist is about to be revealed — and then there isn’t one. – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

It wants to keep you guessing, but once the truth is revealed there’s little left to actually hold it up, and the film crumbles under its own weight. – Matt Rodriguez, Shakefire

Those seeking a twisty-turny set of cinematic surprises should get the requisite shocks they seek. – Eddie Harrison, film-authority.com

The prolific filmmaker has delivered one of his biggest surprises of all by telling a relatively straightforward thriller that places its characters in a fight for survival with wide-reaching implications. – Sam Stone, CBR

M. Night Shyamalan on the set of Knock at the Cabin (2023)

What are its biggest flaws?

While Knock at the Cabin works well in almost every way, it’s missing a spark of energy and intrigue that truly would’ve really knocked it out of the park. – Germain Lussier, io9.com

Knock is so emotionally flat that I found it impossible to care about. For a film in which the stakes couldn’t be higher, that’s a fatal failing. – Roger Moore, Roger’s Movie Nation

The scale never becomes as massive as it should… [It’s] a quickly paced but single-note and ineffectual apocalyptic tale. – Megan Navarro, Bloody Disgusting

The story is solid, but the filmmaking is not… [Shyamalan’s] directorial choices feel as amateurish and contrived as ever. – Louisa Moore, Screen Zealots

There is a hollow ending that wants you to think the story and these characters have some kind of redemption, but it’s a thinly-veiled insult to its audience. – Tom Santilli, Movie Show Plus

Will it make us look forward to the next Shyamalan movie?

After middling returns with Old and Glass , Knock at the Cabin doesn’t quite mark a complete return to form for Shyamalan, but it is a big step in the right direction. – Sam Stone, CBR

Old fans and Servant -heads alike know that M. Night Shyamalan never really left, but Knock at the Cabin feels like it just might convince those not in the know that he’s back. – Charles Pulliam-Moore, The Verge

Knock at the Cabin will serve as a reminder that Shyamalan should be celebrated as much for his craftsmanship as he is for his shock tactics. – Clarisse Loughrey, Independent

Here’s hoping he’s back for good. – Dan Bayer, Next Best Picture

Knock at the Cabin opens everywhere on February 3, 2023.

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Knock at the Cabin Review

It’s the end of the world, and i don’t feel much of anything..

Knock at the Cabin will be released in theaters on Feb. 3, 2023.

M. Night Shyamalan's Knock at the Cabin feels out of alignment with the filmmaker's catalog of twist-heavy, suspense-latent thrillers. Maybe that's because this time Shyamalan has collaborated with two co-writers – Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman – while adapting Paul Tremblay's devastating novel, The Cabin at the End of the World. It's an apocalypse film that doesn't feel all that apocalyptic – an overall one-note and sometimes muted doomsday scenario. Shyamalan's chamber-locked standoff between a cult-like group and a fearful family is occasionally effective but rarely affecting, which doesn't match the bleak tragedy at the heart of Tremblay's story.

Everyone is playing their individual parts well enough as a whole, between same-sex parents Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge), their sweetheart of an adopted daughter Wen (Kristen Cui), and devout captors led by Leonard (Dave Bautista). The standoff takes place in a rental cabin where Eric and Andrew have whisked Wen for some vacation cheerfulness, only to be interrupted by Leonard's crew and informed they have a choice: choose one family member to die, and in doing so save the world.

Bautista ends up being the standout as this hulking conversationalist busting out of his pedestrian button-down shirt, capable of destructive violence and yet softly rationalizing through dialogue with the charismatic command of a cult leader. The stalemate tension hinges on Eric and Andrew's disbelief in divine visions, along with Shyamalan's ability to maintain suspense over Leonard's insistence that our world will burn if no sacrifice is chosen – but only Bautista’s performance is innocent despite both mentioned elements being guilty of lackluster results.

The even temperament of Knock at the Cabin is shocking, given how Shyamalan unleashes brutal heartbreak, remorseless bigotry, plague smiting, and other radically intense experiences. Groff and Aldridge barter for their lives and relationship bliss, yet their romantic chemistry burns no higher than a matchstick's flame. Leonard’s sidekick invaders, including Rupert Grint's Bostonian ex-con Redmond and Nikki Amuka-Bird's apologetic nurse Sabrina, never establish enough backstory to give weight to their sob stories when trying to sway the restrained couple towards a decision. Even when Knock at the Cabin deals with complex emotional predicaments and escalates them on-screen, they tend to play shallow and hollow. Shyamalan's proven himself a fearlessly risk-taking storyteller throughout his career, yet this time he churns through fated motions that should present as more momentous.

What's M. Night Shyamalan's best work of the past decade?

Knock at the Cabin is the plain white bread of home invasion thrillers, structurally dependable while lacking flavor. There's never any instance where the horrors of facing four weapon-wielding strangers draw even an ounce of fear, even with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse symbolism made evident by overt religious overtones – partly because that's not Leonard's intention (or so he states). Eric and Andrew's flashbacks, where their queerness is rejected by everyone from loved ones to anonymous bar patrons, don't feel as authentically upsetting cut between the couple's tied-tight imprisonment because there’s a tendency to rush these otherwise important character moments. Leonard, Redmond, Sabrina, and nurturing line cook Ardiane (Abby Quinn) state their cases as proponents of humankind's survival, but their words hit no harder than down pillows. There's an intriguing concept at stake – sacrifice personal happiness in order to save a world full of monsters – yet Knock at the Cabin doesn't convincingly or compellingly sell its chosen finale.

There are other competencies outside Bautista's breaking of typecast chains that shouldn't go unnoticed. Child performances aren't always reliable, but Cui is a darling addition to scenes because she brings out Bautista's warm compassion or emboldens Groff and Aldridge as partners. Cinematographers Jarin Blaschke and Lowell A. Meyer perceptively use their cameras to emphasize the cabin's isolation, sustaining dramatic pauses as the frame looms steady, heightening uneasiness while we eagerly wait for some conflict to erupt. Shyamalan is no stranger to psychological mind games and dangerous dilemmas, which allows scenes to move smoothly on a functional level from the very minute Bautista's harbinger appears in the woods, but little is built upon that. This cabin's got solid bones, yet is disappointingly barren on the inside.

Knock at the Cabin Stills

Knock at the Cabin fails to knock the classic cabin in the woods horror methods out of the park. M. Night Shyamalan abides by unfittingly formulaic standards and produces a tonal flatliner despite an arsenal of emotionally targeted beatdowns and prophecy-spouting lambs led to slaughter in the name of blind faith. There's nothing uniquely surprising or exceptionally rousing, which is a shame given the unfathomably dreadful predicament and an interesting turn of a performance from Dave Bautista. It's a film without sensation that feels like it's pulling its punches across the board – development is stunted, ideas lack passion, and the camera avoids visible violence – before the ending strolls off into the sunset with barely any goodbye. Thematic messages tethered to Old Testament interpretations are lost when the story wraps due to increasingly stale predictability, as Knock at the Cabin exposes a Shyamalan script with surprisingly little to say.

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In Knock at the Cabin, a Terrific Dave Bautista Saves M. Night Shyamalan From Himself

Dave Bautista gives a career-best performance as a messenger of the apocalypse.

M. Night Shyamalan movies live or die by their twists.

At least, that’s the accepted thinking, based on the filmmaker’s famous (or infamous) inclination to include a jaw-dropping twist in most of his movies. The twist can shock, or baffle, or turn the movie’s entire narrative on its head — but if it’s unsatisfying, the entire film is written off . It’s a reputation that’s overshadowed Shyamalan’s whole career , and one that he’ll probably never fully escape. But refreshingly, with Knock at the Cabin , it seems that Shyamalan has outgrown the plot twist.

Based on Paul G. Tremblay’s 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World , Knock at the Cabin follows the story of a loving family — Eric (Jonathan Groff), Andrew (Ben Aldridge), and their adopted daughter Wen (Kristen Cui) — whose vacation at a remote cabin is interrupted by four strangers arriving at their door. Led by the hulking Leonard (Dave Bautista), the strangers Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Adriane (Abby Quinn), and Redmond (Rupert Grint) insist that they are there to avert the apocalypse. But they need Eric, Andrew, and Wen’s help with a terrible decision: the three must decide which of them must be sacrificed to save all of humanity from dying in a series of world-destroying plagues.

And that’s it, there’s no twist. Instead, Knock at the Cabin is a straightforward exercise in nail-biting suspense, steered by a filmmaker at the height of his confidence in his craft, and powered by a tremendous antagonistic turn from Bautista, who gives the best performance of his career yet.

It’s clear this is Bautista’s movie from the opening moments, when he emerges from the woods to approach Wen, who’s collecting grasshoppers outside the cabin. Bautista’s Leonard first appears as just a blurry figure in the distance, before we cut to his feet, his boots stomping on the worn-down path like some ominous death knell, each heavy thump reverberating through the screen until it settles in your bones. Shot from afar, Bautista’s large physique feels inherently threatening, but Shyamalan chooses to mostly show him in extreme close-up, Bautista’s gentle, open face putting the audience — and Wen — at ease as he asks her about her grasshoppers and her family.

But then, things start to feel a little off . As Leonard and Wen’s conversation continues, each cut becomes a deeper Dutch angle. A wide shot of the woods distorts with a dolly zoom, and soon, three other people emerge from the woods, each carrying a strange, primitive weapon. Leonard apologizes to Wen “with all of my broken heart,” and she flees to the cabin, pulling her dads inside and insisting they lock the doors. And the unrelenting barrage of dread and suspense begins.

Eric (Jonathan Groff), Andrew (Ben Aldridge), and their adopted daughter Wen (Kristen Cui) fend off strangers in Knock at the Cabin .

Shyamalan might have found his perfect collaborator in Bautista, who nails the tricky balance of earnest tone and stilted dialogue typical of the filmmaker’s movies, all while radiating a terrifying, unreadable fanaticism that feels equal turns compassionate and menacing. He’s a gentle giant who apologizes to his would-be victims and puts cartoons on for Wen, but he believes in his task with a religious fervor that makes his every action incomprehensible to everyone but him.

Shyamalan’s signature quirk of awkward dialogue, which is less pronounced here thanks to co-writers Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman, feels somehow natural coming from Bautista’s lips — Leonard’s words feel rehearsed because they are, his actions are practiced because he did. And despite the limitations of the character, Bautista manages to convey deep empathy and sadness with every word he utters; it feels like his short, heartbreaking scene in Blade Runner 2049 turned up to 11. This is a man given a terrible burden he wouldn’t wish on anyone, and Bautista sells that.

But Knock at the Cabin is not just Bautista’s movie. Amuka-Bird, Quinn, and Grint are all standouts as Bautista’s uncertain fellow horsemen of the apocalypse, with all of them a little apologetic, all of them scared. Grint especially, as the jittery, hotheaded wild card, nearly steals the scenes from Bautista a few times.

But if there’s anyone to hold a candle to Bautista, it’s Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge as Eric and Andrew, whose stubborn resistance to the strangers’ awful demands is only superseded by their unflagging loyalty to each other and Wen. Unlike the four strangers, Eric and Andrew are given the benefit of a character arc, with flashbacks to their lives together interwoven throughout the movie. It helps the two feel like the most fleshed-out and intensely human of Shyamalan characters, an achievement aided by the fact that Groff and Aldridge seem to have sidestepped the “awkward dialogue” requirements of his films.

Leonard (Dave Bautista), (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Adriane (Abby Quinn), and Redmond (Rupert Grint) in Knock at the Cabin .

Shyamalan hasn’t quashed all of his worst instincts — Knock at the Cabin feels almost unbearably earnest at times, and its messages are spelled out a little too obviously — but it does feel like he’s reached a new level of confidence as a filmmaker that he was just starting to gain with Old . Given a straightforward thriller like this, Shyamalan lets loose a little with his filmmaking style, the aforementioned Dutch angles and dolly zooms being only a few of the directorial tricks he uses to amp up the dread. It might be his most technically impressive film thus far, even if it’s not his most narratively exciting one.

Knock at the Cabin is a rock-solid thriller, but not an amazing one. Its Biblical apocalypse prevents it from playing as anything more than a parable, and limits it from reaching for any deeper meaning beneath the surface-level suspense. The latter makes some readings of the film’s ending as potentially insidious feel thin. But as a showcase for Shyamalan’s evolving abilities as a filmmaker, it does a great job. And even if Knock at the Cabin doesn’t live or die by a twist, it gets all the life it needs from a terrific, terrifying Bautista.

Knock at the Cabin opens in theaters on February 3.

This article was originally published on Feb. 1, 2023

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M. Night Shyamalan is back with Knock at the Cabin , a horror mystery that transpires in one location and ramps up the tension in interesting ways. Based on The Cabin at the End of the World , the 2018 novel by Paul G. Tremblay, Shyamalan’s latest film — co-written by him, Steve Desmond, and Michael Sherman — is harrowing and intriguing. Though it lingers on the surface with regard to its themes, it builds upon the fear and tension that so clearly permeates the film. With an excellent ensemble cast and intense character dynamics, Knock at the Cabin is a high-stakes horror that delights in the doubt and confusion that arises.

Knock at the Cabin opens with seven-year-old Wen (Kristen Cui), who is in search of grasshoppers when she is approached by Leonard (Dave Bautista). Wen is clearly wary of Leonard, who quickly introduces himself and explains that she and her dads — Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and Eric (Jonathan Groff) — will have to make a decision soon. When Wen sees Leonard has friends, including Redmond (Rupert Grint), Ardiane (Abby Quinn), and Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), approaching with weapons, she runs inside to alert her parents. Leonard and his associates eventually force themselves into a cabin, telling the scared family that they must decide who among the three of them will be sacrificed or risk the apocalypse killing everyone on Earth.

Related: M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock At The Cabin Reviewed By Original Book Author

ben aldridge jonathan groff knock at the cabin

One of the things Knock at the Cabin does so well is confuse viewers. One will be torn between believing Leonard and his associates — they’re incredibly convincing — and wanting to side with Andrew, who is vehemently against their goals and way of thinking. Is everything — two earthquakes, planes falling from the sky — a mere coincidence, or is there some truth to the invaders’ words? Shyamalan’s film seems to be giving clues to the latter by the end, but it’s still vague enough that one is never entirely clear on what the truth is and whether it was all simply a manipulation, a power play paired with strong coincidences.

Knock at the Cabin’s tension is great, though it peters out after a certain point because the audience begins to know what to expect. Shyamalan isn’t so much concerned with the twists here so much as the thrill of not knowing, letting the uncertainty wash over the audience as they begin to question everything about what’s going on. There are violent instances, but the film’s R rating seems unwarranted considering that most of the brutality is implied and heard rather than actually seen. The score, eerie and intense, helps to elevate the distressing atmosphere.

knock at the cabin jonathan groff dave bautista

Dave Bautista is especially a standout among the ensemble. His performance is measured, his overpowering physicality balanced by a raw sensitivity that is handled delicately. Bautista imbues Leonard with sincerity, and he’s quite easy to believe because he’s so gently adamant about his assertions; he’s firm, yet soft. Ben Aldridge is also fantastic. Aldridge’s Andrew is the antithesis of Leonard. He’s strong in his opposing beliefs, clinging to the facts and understanding the violence humanity can wreak, which is why he’s far more wary of Leonard’s crew than Eric. Aldridge is a protective force, strong-minded and stubborn, loving and fierce. The rest of the cast, including a tender, stalwart Jonathan Groff and a caring, warm-hearted Nikki Amuka-Bird, are wonderful, and each of them makes the most of their screen time, leaving a strong impression on viewers.

Knock at the Cabin falters in its themes, however, as it’s not as deep as it aims to be. The film gets too caught up in its structure, repeating discussions and arguments in an endless back-and-forth between the two groups of characters. This keeps it from delving further into its religious undertones, and the debate about miracles and coincidences. Despite the somewhat surface-level approach to its themes, Shyamalan’s film is riveting, easily pulling the audience into the story and keeping them engaged throughout. The use of close-ups and angles are meant to warp thoughts and breed distrust in certain scenes, while suggesting warmth and affection in others. It’s a clever tactic that will awaken the senses while watching.

Shyamalan’s latest is certainly one of his best in a while. It’s magnetic and will keep one guessing; no matter how much the audience thinks they know by the end, Knock at the Cabin will leave one in doubt. This aspect is one of the strongest features of the film, as are the outstanding performances from the ensemble cast. While the themes aren’t as effective as they could be, or even thoroughly explored, it doesn’t take away from the film’s sense of mystery and curiosity. Shyamalan is in his element once more, and it mostly pays off.

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Knock at the Cabin releases in theaters on February 3. The film is 100 minutes long and rated R for violence and language.

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M. Night Shyamalan’s <i>Knock at the Cabin</i> Is Overly Preachy

M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin Is Overly Preachy

S ay what you will about the films of M. Night Shyamalan : they tend to be short, dropping just enough clues about the inevitable impending twist that they don’t wear out their welcome. And Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin has relative brevity going for it, at least. But instead of short and fleet, it’s short and fat, trundling along with the solemnity of an elephant bearing a heavy golden basket of pseudo-spirituality. It’s suspenseful enough, but the tension it generates is the unpleasant kind, particularly in the way it exposes a very young character to some truly terrifying sights and experiences, only to wave away any possible effect on her. (The idea seems to be that she’s so bright she’ll get over it.) Worse yet, it’s so eagerly progressive in its social views that it’s almost retrograde: beyond merely insisting on the normalcy of the idea that a child might have two dads, the plot hinges on the novelty of it. With Knock at the Cabin Shyamalan may be trying to change minds and hearts, even more than he’s trying to scare us. But even by Shyamalan’s usual standard of reminding us that he’s a thinker of deep thoughts as well as an entertainer, the result is cumbersomely preachy.

Adorably precocious grade-schooler Wen (Kristen Cui), dressed in a quaintly hip smock-and-sweater outfit straight out of a Scandinavian children’s clothing catalog, is hopping through the forest collecting grasshoppers when she’s approached, in characteristically foreboding Shyamalan fashion, by a heavy man in heavy boots. His meaty arms are covered in tattoos, but his eyes are kind—because this is Dave Bautista we’re talking about. This man, who identifies himself as Leonard, says he wants to make friends with Wen, and quickly learns her name, her favorite movie, and that she has two dads—the family is in the area on vacation, having rented a luxuriously rustic cabin for their getaway.

He also has a warning for her: regretfully, he and his “friends”—as yet unseen, though we hear them rustling in the brush as they approach—are on a crucial mission, and Wen must persuade her parents to let them into the house. If they won’t, the group will have to force their way in. This sounds like a bad bargain to Wen, let alone to the audience, and she runs to warn her fathers, Daddy Eric ( Jonathan Groff ) and Daddy Andrew ( Ben Aldridge ), though they read her chatter as a kid’s fantasy. Before long, Leonard and his three associates—Nikki Amuka-Bird’s calm, kindly Sabrina, Rupert Grint’s hotheaded Redmond and Abby Quinn’s spacey Adriane, all bearing threatening homemade weapons that they refer to as “tools”—have broken into the house like hungry zombies, making the family their captives as they spin out a shared apocalyptic vision involving plague, black skies and other stuff. Only Wen’s family can halt this horrific progression of events, but it will require an unspeakable sacrifice.

To tell you much more about Knock at the Cabin would violate the vow of near-silence required of nearly everyone who sees a Shyamalan movie before the general public does. Shyamalan and fellow screenwriters Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman have adapted the movie from Paul G. Tremblay’s 2018 horror novel The Cabin at the End of the World, though it appears they have taken significant liberties with the ending. There’s some knockabout violence, though the grislier events happen off-camera, suggested rather than shown. (Shyamalan has always been discreet that way.) And uncharacteristically for Shyamalan, there’s no real twist ending. By midfilm, you can pretty much see where the story is headed.

Yet why, exactly, has this particular family been chosen by the grand, string-pulling whomever to be the saviors of the world? That’s a question the movie never quite answers, though it’s hinted that the love between Wen, Daddy Andrew, and Daddy Eric is so intense and pure that it only stands to reason they’ve been chosen as humanity’s last hope. The movie’s finest scenes are its flashbacks, showing Eric and Andrew doing both average and special things. There’s a tense, sad “meeting the parents” scene that signals family disapproval of the union. At one point the two men profess both their love and their annoyance with one another in a bar, just before a life-changing event occurs there. And when they first meet Wen as an infant, having trekked to a hospital somewhere in Asia to adopt her, they can’t reveal to the nurses that they’re a couple, but their joy at welcoming this snuggly little bundle into their arms is its own truth.

Aldridge and Groff are good enough actors to pull all of this off without undue sentimentality. Yet the movie around them vibrates with special pleading. Every other minute it beams a signal that announces, “Look at these amazing gay dads!” And naturally, they’re the ones who, in their selflessness—and despite, or maybe because of, their history of being persecuted for who they are—are asked to make the ultimate offering to the vengeful god who rules the movie.

Early in the film, Wen explains to Leonard in exasperation that a guidance counselor at her school repeatedly gushes how awesome it is that she has two fathers. Yet the movie does the same thing, penning this modern but not so out-of-the ordinary family into their own little petting zoo. Shyamalan seems to be in a particularly pensive mood here, ruminating on the fact that we’re destroying our world, but also, it seems, hoping that love, along with a change in our thinking, might save it. But he also can’t resist inserting himself into this tightly conscripted little circle: the whole movie takes place in and around that remote cabin, but he still finds a way to assert his presence via his traditional Hitchcock-style cameo. Knock at the Cabin may be one of Shyamalan’s most serious-minded movies, but even as the world may be ending, he can’t resist a little in-joke. His fans expect it, and he’s a crowd-pleaser above all.

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Knock at the cabin, common sense media reviewers.

Strange, gruesome, but effective thriller about compassion.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The big question addressed is whether humanity is

Eric and Andrew are examples of good parents -- at

Main characters are a White gay couple (Jonathan G

Killings and death. Blood seeps through white clot

Several uses of "f--k" or "f---ing." Also "bulls--

In flashback, characters have drinks in a bar (som

Positive Messages

The big question addressed is whether humanity is worth saving. Movie argues that while humans do terrible things and there are lies and deceptions and evil cults, there's also great beauty, great hope, and the power of love.

Positive Role Models

Eric and Andrew are examples of good parents -- at least for a little while, until their lives are interrupted.

Diverse Representations

Main characters are a White gay couple (Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge) who have a young adopted daughter (Chinese American actor Kristen Cui) with a facial difference (her scar suggests a repaired cleft lip). The four intruders are played by Dave Bautista (who's half Filipino), Nikki Amuka-Bird (who's Black), and Abby Quinn and Rupert Grint (who are White). TV news commentators include many characters of color and women. Director/co-writer Shyamalan, who appears in one of his usual cameos, is Indian American. Leonard (Bautista) counters stereotypes often associated with large, muscular people by turning out to be gentle, thoughtful, and compassionate.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Killings and death. Blood seeps through white cloth. Bloody wounds. Character slits own neck, blood seeping through clothing. Guns and shooting. Menacing homemade weapons. Fighting, swinging weapons, punching. Character with bloody face. Character crashes to floor, has concussion. Hate crime: A man in a bar smashes a bottle over a gay man's head; bloody wounds. Person clubbed in knee. Man throws pebbles in woman's face. Scary news footage includes planes crashing, viruses, tsunami, flooding, etc. Building on fire. Dialogue: "My father used to beat the s--t out of me." Creepy, unsettling drawings during opening titles.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Several uses of "f--k" or "f---ing." Also "bulls--t," "horses--t," "bitch," "bastard," "ass," "goddamn," "oh Jesus God," "d--k," "crap."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

In flashback, characters have drinks in a bar (some have too many). A character says "I like beer."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Knock at the Cabin is a horror-thriller from director M. Night Shyamalan about two dads ( Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge ) and their young daughter (Kristen Cui) who are asked by four intruders to execute one member of their family in order to save humanity. Based on a novel by Paul Tremblay, it's a suspenseful, economical, and even intimate film that wrestles with the question of what aspects of humanity are actually worth saving. Violence is intense: There are killings, bloody wounds, blood seeping through clothing, guns and shooting, a character slicing their own neck, fighting, bludgeoning with weapons, a hate crime, terrifying news footage, a concussion, and more. Language includes "f--k" and "f---ing," "bulls--t," "bitch," "bastard," "ass," and "goddamn." A flashback takes place in a bar, with some drinking and drunkenness. Dave Bautista and Rupert Grint co-star. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 8 parent reviews

On the edge of my seat!

What's the story.

In KNOCK AT THE CABIN, Eric ( Jonathan Groff ), Andrew ( Ben Aldridge ), and their daughter, Wen (Kristen Cui), are vacationing in a quiet cabin. While Wen is out collecting grasshoppers, she's approached by Leonard ( Dave Bautista ), who tells her that he wants to be her friend. Before long, three other people -- Sabrina ( Nikki Amuka-Bird ), Ardiane ( Abby Quinn ), and Redmond ( Rupert Grint ) -- approach, all carrying strange-looking weapons. Wen and her dads lock themselves in the cabin, but soon, Leonard and the others force their way inside. Once Eric and Andrew are subdued and tied up, Leonard makes an unexpected request: The family must decide to kill one among them in order to save all of humanity. If not, the apocalypse is coming.

Is It Any Good?

M. Night Shyamalan 's horror-thriller makes terrific use of its intimate scale and level-headed approach, generating suspense through suggestion and surprising empathy for the characters. Shyamalan doesn't usually do adaptations, but here he lets Paul Tremblay's novel The Cabin at the End of the World do all the heavy lifting. As a result, Knock at the Cabin showcases the director's singular, spatial visual style without crumbling under the lackluster writing that sometimes sabotages his work. That said, the movie does lose some of its suspense as it ramps up and reveals more information in the final act. But Knock at the Cabin starts economically and emotionally and rarely falters. Bautista sets the tone with his Leonard character, countering stereotypes often associated with large, muscular people by turning out to be gentle, thoughtful, and compassionate (he seems genuinely hurt at the suggestion that he might be lying about this apocalyptic scenario). For all of the threat and death on the line, the characters' tense, back-and-forth conversations are mainly about love and hope. And the fight between the worst of humanity and the best of humanity keeps viewers constantly guessing.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Knock at the Cabin 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

What do you think you might do in this situation? Is humanity worth such an extraordinary sacrifice? Why, or why not?

What positive representations did you notice in the film? Are stereotypes used?

Is the movie scary? What's the appeal of horror movies ? Why do people sometimes like to be scared?

If you've read the book the movie is based on, how does the film compare?

Movie Details

In theaters : February 3, 2023
On DVD or streaming : May 9, 2023
Cast : Dave Bautista , Jonathan Groff , Rupert Grint
Director : M. Night Shyamalan
Inclusion Information : Asian actors, Gay actors
Studio : Universal Pictures
Genre : Thriller
Topics : Book Characters
Run time : 100 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : violence and language
Last updated : May 10, 2024

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“Knock at the Cabin,” Reviewed: Be Nice to the QAnoners, or They’ll Do an Apocalypse

By Richard Brody

A hefty and tall bald man holds a scaredlooking child on one arm and a huge pitchfork in the other another figure ...

Spoiler alert: the climactic event of “Knock at the Cabin” is a book burning. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that, lest anyone deem Hollywood a solid front of liberal messaging, this new film by M. Night Shyamalan provides yet another hefty counterexample. In a year that has delivered such models of illiberal retrenchment as “ Top Gun: Maverick ,” “ Tár ,” and “ Avatar: The Way of Water ,” “Knock at the Cabin” has the virtue of being the most daring, brazen, imaginative, and radical of them. It’s starkly posed as a conflict of faith against reason—and it presents a faith-based order that’s ready and willing to use violence in pursuit of its redemptive vision. So far, so apt. What’s jolting about Shyamalan’s film is its call to capitulation. The director puts the onus on the liberal and progressive element of American society to meet violent religious radicals more than halfway, lest they yield to even worse rages, lest they unleash an apocalypse.

Or, rather, the Apocalypse. The premise of the movie is the visitation, upon an ordinary American family, of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who aren’t all men and who show up not on horseback but by truck, and who turn a seemingly run-of-the-mill home-invasion thriller into a cosmic spectacle of metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. It’s also a suspense film, in which just about nothing but the plot matters, and therefore any discussion risks being spoiler-y; I’ll be careful, but be forewarned. The family that’s vacationing in the titular cabin, isolated in deep woods and far beyond cell-phone signals, comprises Andrew (Ben Aldridge), a human-rights lawyer; Eric (Jonathan Groff), whose job is unspecified; and their daughter, Wen (Kristen Cui), who discloses at the start that she’s nearly eight, and whom they adopted from China. The foursome of intruders is led by one Leonard (Dave Bautista), a soft-spoken hulk and second-grade teacher from Chicago; his companions are Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), a nurse from Southern California; Adriane (Abby Quinn), a line cook at a Mexican restaurant in Washington, D.C.; and Redmond (Rupert Grint), who works for a gas company in Medford, Massachusetts.

The first contact is made, in the woods, by Leonard, who espies Wen catching grasshoppers and gently tries to convince her that he’s a nice guy, not a creep, explaining that he needs to meet her parents and that it’s a matter of his job—“maybe the most important job in the history of the world.” (For a second, I thought he might be a film critic.) The foursome indeed knocks, and, when they’re denied entry, they break in by means of the weapons that they call tools: neo-medieval, seemingly homemade devices (such as a pickaxe and a mallet at the end of a thick broomstick). Then they make the demand that already went viral, long before the movie’s opening, by way of its trailers. The four intruders claim to have foreknowledge of impending disasters that will extinguish human life—unless this family chooses one member to sacrifice and then carries out the killing, and not by suicide. One trailer put the choice starkly—“save your family or save humanity”—but, of course, there’s no choice; they need to do both, and the movie’s main suspense is how they’ll manage to pull it off.

There’s no discussing “Knock at the Cabin” without disclosing another pair of salient details: first, the quartet is endowed with powers stronger than mere clairvoyance. They’re able to cause apocalyptic, high-body-count plagues and, in the course of the action, they don’t shrink from doing so in the name of a higher justice, or, as they say, “judgment.” (It’s never clear that the apocalypse that they foresee is anything more than the one that they themselves control.) Second, out of all the cabins and all the families that the apocalyptos could have picked, they landed on a place inhabited by a couple with whom they had history—one of the quartet happens to have been a gay-basher who attacked Andrew and left him with serious injuries as well as some non-Christian thoughts about aggressive self-defense. (That the basher’s real name is revealed to be O’Bannon, an unambiguously political wink, suggests the extent to which Shyamalan expects an L.G.B.T.Q. human-rights attorney to turn the other cheek, forgive, defer, and, yes, even obey.)

The action is punctuated by brief flashbacks to Eric and Andrew, in earlier days, that thinly and superficially sketch their backstory. It’s a notable effort—that suggests how misguided and wrongheaded Shyamalan’s approach to his own subject is. By striking contrast, the backstory of the four bearers of doom is delivered verbally. They tell their own stories, in a couple of superficial sentences, that have this in common: each of them was possessed of visions of apocalyptic destruction—horrific visions that caused them to give up their livelihoods and, at great personal cost, find each other and then find the one and only family that would match their vision and could redeem the world.

That backstory is the unseen, undeveloped essence of “Knock at the Cabin,” the story of four visionaries whose possession leads to a cross-country odyssey and a death-besotted showdown. Whom do they leave behind and how, how do they find each other, and what do they do when they unite? How do they find the family with the power of deliverance? What do they talk about, how do they plan, what persuades them of the actuality of their powers? (Did they practice their apocalyptic skills on a small scale, by zapping weeds or making a pond overflow?) How do they distinguish (if at all) their own ability to make worldwide mischief and their vision of the mischief that’s made independent of them by a higher power? What’s their sense of the morality of their quest? Why don’t they decide instead to cure cancer or end hunger?

The story of religious experience, of prophetic visionaries who go to seemingly mad lengths to prove the authenticity of their wild imaginings—this is the premise of some great movies that already exist, such as Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “ Ordet ” and Michael Tolkin’s “ The Rapture. ” The theme is so rich that there’s room for more, and a director standing in the line of these and other filmmakers can use it to prove their own art of imagination, imaginative sympathy, and spiritual curiosity (as many filmmakers have done, for instance, with the character of Joan of Arc, ranging from Dreyer and Robert Bresson to Jacques Rivette and Bruno Dumont ).

Shyamalan betrays no such curiosity; he doesn’t appear to take such visionary experience seriously, but only its effect, as sheer power—essentially, as supernatural Hitlerians exterminating hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people by means of their own death cult. The drama that Shyamalan pursues is how reasonable and well-intentioned people can and should respond to possessed destroyers who hold them hostage. The movie’s answer is a sickening one.

“Knock at the Cabin” is an adaptation—or rather an extreme transformation—of the novel “ The Cabin at the End of the World ,” by Paul Tremblay. The setup and the characters are essentially the same, as are the themes of faith versus reason, resistance versus compromise. But the action itself, once the quartet penetrates the cabin, is drastically different. That’s not a reproach to Shyamalan (on the contrary, many of the best adaptations are similarly extreme); rather, it’s the specifics of his own vision that border on the outrageous. The script (which the director wrote with Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman) makes the foursome’s wrath, their willful bent toward destruction, all the more conspicuous. The film’s attitude toward resistance and moral responsibility, too, is altogether different from the book, in ways that conflate the intruders’ metaphysical and temporal power.

Whether it’s delusions of voter fraud and rigged elections, delusions of “ woke” bigotry , delusions of Pizzagate-like conspiracies , delusions about the “ deep state ,” or delusions about the tyrannies of vaccines, American politics and American lives are filled with faith-like visions of absolute certitude about absolute bullshit. These visions are backed with the power of guns and money . In one sense, “Knock at the Cabin” is a warning about the knock at the door that may come for any of us under a regime of religious fascism—perhaps for having the wrong books in the wrong places. In another, Shyamalan is pummelling his viewers’ mental immune system, softening America up to accept and comply with even the outrageous and devastating demands of the religious right, lest its operatives and acolytes do even worse things. It’s a movie that takes the fight out of its viewers even as it takes the books out of their hands; it’s a work of anti-resistance cinema. ♦

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Knock at the Cabin Is M. Night Shyamalan’s Best Film Since The Village

An enormous hulk of a man offering a flower to a young girl in the woods. It recalls one of the most enduring and chilling images in all of horror, from James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931). That’s just one reason why we sense such dread in the opening scene of M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin, as Dave Bautista’s Leonard murmurs to 7-year-old Wen (Kristen Cui), “I’m not from around here, but I’m looking to make some new friends. Can I talk to you?” Shyamalan makes sure to shoot Bautista from all the right angles, for maximum hugeness. And the actor plays it perfectly, his voice gentle, his eyes troubled, candor and reticence clashing beneath those unreal shoulders. We have no idea where this is going, even as we realize it can’t go anywhere good.

If you’ve seen the trailers for Knock at the Cabin , you probably already know that Leonard and a trio of strangers will soon present Wen and her parents, Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge), with an impossible choice: They must willingly sacrifice one member of their family in order to avert the apocalypse. Not an apocalypse but the apocalypse. “First, the cities will drown,” Leonard intones. “The oceans will rise up … A terrible plague will descend … The skies will fall and crash to the earth like pieces of glass.” Is he for real, or have our heroes been waylaid by a quartet of psychos? Again, Bautista’s performance stirs the uncertainty: The quaver in Leonard’s voice tells us that he believes what he’s saying but that he can’t believe that he’s saying what he’s saying — which in turn helps us believe what he’s saying.

Among the qualities that make Shyamalan such an effective director of thrillers is his fluency in the many languages of genre. The film smoothly moves from the textures of one type of chiller to another, even as the mood remains eerily consistent. That Frankenstein opening soon gives way to a home-invasion picture. Then, as Leonard’s cohorts try to convince Eric and Andrew of the reality of their cause, they speak about their families and their jobs and all they’ve given up to come out here to talk to these good people, and we recognize the fervency: It’s what we hear from deranged cult followers in movies. Finally, when we do catch glimpses of the chaos that Leonard foretells, we may realize that we’ve been inside a disaster flick all along.

In his best work, Shyamalan has also infused such genre theatrics with a decidedly earnest (and audience-friendly) form of humanity. It’s what defined his early films and his early success. But he seemed to wean himself off this tendency in later hits such as The Visit (2015) and Split (2016), which were a lot more ruthless and severe than pictures like The Village (2004), Signs (2002), and Unbreakable (2000). (That might have been because the director’s most emotionally naked film, 2006’s Lady in the Water , almost brought his career crashing down around him.) In Knock at the Cabin , that sincerity comes roaring back, not just in its flashbacks to Eric and Andrew’s early years and their adoption of Wen, but also in the snatches of information we get about the home invaders themselves. Leonard is an elementary-school teacher and bartender; Adriane (Abby Quinn) is a chef and a single mother; Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird) is a post-op nurse; Redmond (Rupert Grint, unrecognizable) is a shithead from Boston. Such moments make these people sadder, but also more dangerous; we learn just enough to start wondering about their lives, and a real person onscreen is always more menacing than a one-dimensional monster.

Knock at the Cabin is based on Paul Tremblay’s 2018 novel, The Cabin at the End of the World , and the script follows the book pretty closely for the first two-thirds, before delivering a dramatically different final act. There are deeper, spiritual differences between the two as well. Both are works of the apocalyptic imagination, but Tremblay’s tale is more insular, working the ambiguity of the situation to explore the characters’ faith and emotional perseverance; he keeps us mostly (and purposefully) in the dark about whether the terrible things Leonard is prophesying are in fact coming to pass. Shyamalan, however, understands that there is usually little ambiguity around such horrors in cinema, at least in today’s cinema. For him, uncertainty is merely a grace note to help build suspense (and to give the characters dimension), but there’s little doubt as to what’s going on. In 2023, when someone in a movie says the world is ending, it usually is.

That might be because of the way we make movies nowadays, but it might also be because of the way we think nowadays. Look at the TV and read the news; it seems like our world is always ending, and we are always helpless to change it. Earthquakes and tsunamis; pandemics run amok; planes falling from the sky. These ideas are all in Tremblay’s novel, but Shyamalan runs with the imagery, activating our sense memory of the horrors we’ve already lived through in the 21st century, as well as what we imagine will be the horrors to come. (And, depending on who we are, the horrors we imagine, or at least their causes, might be radically different.)

Grief often lies at the heart of Shyamalan’s work. Usually, that grief is in the past — traumatic losses, lives left unlived, bodies left broken. This time, however, it seems to lie in the future. In that opening scene, Leonard looks at the slight dent on Wen’s mouth where she once had a cleft lip. “I don’t have a scar like you, but if you look inside, you’ll see that my heart is broken,” he says. He’s talking specifically about the grisly deed he’s about to undertake. But in the grim quiet of the forest, Shyamalan and Bautista let the man’s sadness linger and expand. In his mournful silence, his heart breaks for the whole world.

At the same time, Knock at the Cabin reverses that aforementioned helplessness. What if , it asks, you could change things with just one act? Indeed, it makes a fine analog — and even maybe a counterpoint — to the common superhero movie, in which beings of great power come together over and over again to save the Earth. Here, a group of ordinary people come together to do the same, but, in a rather biblical twist, they can only do so in the most awful, gruesome, terrifying way. The result is the most exhilarating and wounding film M. Night Shyamalan has made in many, many years.

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Review: 'Knock at the Cabin' is peak-form Shyamalan, a suspense master

Astonish us!

Dave Bautista, Nikki Amuka-Bird, and Rupert Grint are shown in a scene from the movie, "Knock At The Cabin."

Astonish us! That seems to be the demand we make on India-born filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan every time he unleashes a new horrorfest. We want that "Sixth Sense" twist again. The twist comes with all the suspense trimmings in "Knock at the Cabin," only in theaters since there's no place like the dark to gather audiences and fry their nerves to a frazzle.

Will this be the movie to finally knock "Avatar: The Way of Water" off the top of the box-office charts? Don't bet against it.

"Knock at the Cabin," directed and co-written by Shyamalan, is an adaptation of the 2018 novel "The Cabin at the End of the World" by Paul Tremblay. Don't grab the book to figure out the ending since Shyamalan modified it to suit his own brand of terror, which means creating an atmosphere of compelling claustrophobia that holds you in its grip.

PHOTO: Ben Aldridge, Jonathan Groff, and Kristen Cui are shown in a scene from the movie, "Knock At The Cabin."

The big twist this time comes at the start. A gay couple, Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and Eric (Jonathan Groff), are enjoying a weekend getaway at a remote lakeside cabin in the Pennsylvania woods with their 8-year-old daughter Wen (the supremely adorable Kristen Cui). Then a knock comes at the cabin door.

Right away we're thinking home invasion since a quartet of stranger-dangers, led by the hulking Leonard (Dave Bautista), is carrying scary homemade weapons. Will it be robbery, kidnapping, even murder? Or are they homophobes who don't approve of gay adoption?

MORE: Review: 'See How They Run' is a wicked fun whodunit that goes down easy

I'll never tell, though I will say that Leonard and his pals, Redmond (Rupert Grint), Adriane (Abby Quinn) and Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), are on a mission to save the world from apocalypse. And to do it they need this family to voluntarily sacrifice one of its members.

Not gonna happen is the general response. But the TV is alive with images of jets falling out of the sky, not to mention tidal waves and plague. Plus the invaders seem sympathetic to the family's plight. Leonard may look like a human battering ram, but Bautista -- the former wrestler is all kinds of amazing in an expectations-defying performance -- brims over with empathy.

PHOTO: Dave Bautista, Nikki Amuka-Bird, and Rupert Grint are shown in a scene from the movie, "Knock At The Cabin."

You feel the tension between the two daddies, both avid to protect their child. Aldridge ("Fleabag") finds the heat in Andrew that makes him want to strike out. Groff, so great as singer ("Spring Awakening," "Hamilton") and actor ("Mindhunter," "Looking"), is superb as Eric and speaks movingly to Shyamalan's theme about the necessity of faith in times of crisis.

MORE: Review: 'M3gan' is a miracle of modern horror cinema that leaves you reeling

There are flashbacks to suggest a connection between these men and the intruders who claim to be afflicted with visions that drive them forward. "Knock at the Cabin" is R-rated for scenes of violence. That's no joke. There are brutal images that will pull you up short.

Flesh and spirit have been part of Shyamalan's work from the start in fine films ("The Sixth Sense," "Signs," "Unbroken") and outright duds ("The Happening," "Old," "Glass").

"Knock at the Cabin" can be too fuzzy, too earnest and too full of itself for its own good. Like Wen collecting grasshoppers in a jar, Shyamalan is observing the world in microcosm with good and evil in an uneasy truce. The metaphors weigh a ton. Still, at its best, this is peak-form Shyamalan, a suspense master who knows how to fill the screen with tension and squeeze.

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Knock at the Cabin ending explained: Here's how the M. Night Shyamalan twist differs from the book

Let's unpack that M. Night Shyamalan big finish.

Warning: This article contains spoilers about Knock at the Cabin .

With another M. Night Shyamalan movie comes another Shyamalan twist. Following Glass , Old , and the latest episodes of Servant , Knock at the Cabin delivers a story that's meant to keep audiences guessing until its climactic ending.

Based on Paul G. Tremblay's 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World , the film sees husbands Andrew ( Ben Aldridge ) and Eric ( Jonathan Groff ) vacationing at a lakeside cabin in the woods with their daughter, Wen (Kristen Cui), when the unthinkable happens. Four strangers — a large, spectacled elementary school teacher named Leonard ( Dave Bautista ), a seemingly kind-hearted cook named Ardiane (Abby Quinn), a conflicted nurse named Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), and a rough-and-tumble man named Redmond ( Rupert Grint ) — invade their lodging.

The men are tied up and presented with a cruel task: choose a member of their family to sacrifice. The strangers promise they won't make the decision for them, but they will not allow any of them to leave the premises until a decision has been made. If the family does not pick a sacrifice, the kidnappers are convinced the world will come to an end.

Are they lying or is the world really on the brink of the apocalypse? Below, we break down what happens in the ending and how it differs from the book.

The entire movie is meant to keep the audience guessing. The strangers claim that one family is chosen every so often to decide the fate of all of humanity. They guess Andrew and Eric were chosen because of the immense love they share for each other and their daughter. Collective visions have seemingly brought these four disparate individuals together to deliver the challenge.

Each time Andrew and Eric refuse to make the sacrifice, the strangers kill one of their own with "tools" they've built, again based on visions they claim to have had. They start with Redmond and work their way up to Leonard. Each death is meant to unleash a plague upon the world.

Andrew, a lawyer, is the more logical one of the family who has a reasonable answer for the strangers' Biblical rantings. When Redmond is killed, Leonard turns on the TV to watch a tsunami kill thousands off the California coast. Andrew points out that the news broadcast was previously recorded and believes their kidnappers are keeping track of the time to coincide a death with a news broadcast. They are all just deluded conspiracy theorists who found purpose in shady internet chatrooms, he claims.

Eric, however, is more empathetic and subject to suggestion. He was also concussed when the strangers first attacked them, which may or may not account for the visions he sees throughout the film, that of a human figure glimpsed within the light.

The family continues to watch the strangers kill themselves and supposed plagues play out on television broadcasts, not fully knowing if they are real or not. All planes currently in flight fall from the sky, a mysterious virus (not COVID) rapidly spreads around the globe, and devastating lighting strikes scorch the planet without warning.

While it seems like the family might make it out of this alive, it becomes time for Leonard to kill himself. Before he does, he warns the men that after he's gone they have mere moments to make a sacrifice before they are forced to roam an apocalyptic hellscape with Wen as the only surviving human left on the planet. Eric, now believing the strangers were really the four horsemen of the apocalypse, convinces Andrew to shoot him dead to save his family and the rest of mankind.

Upon leaving the cabin with Eric's corpse inside, Andrew and Wen observe a world that seems like it has been scarred by the plagues. Andrew spots at least one plane fall from the sky, and the dark clouds that have gathered above have mysteriously dispersed. They arrive at a nearby diner and find the entire establishment has been watching the same news feeds they viewed with bated breath, only now the relieved anchors are reporting that the aforementioned plagues are easing up without an apparent cause.

The events play out rather differently in Tremblay's book. First of all, Wen dies from an accidental gunshot during a scuffle with Leonard in the cabin. The strangers claim that her death doesn't count because the family didn't willingly choose her as the sacrifice. Choice wasn't a factor. The outcome of this sequence is completely left out of the movie.

There are also some cosmetic changes. For instance, Andrew kills Adriane with the gun from his car in the book, while he ends up killing Sabrina with the pistol in the movie. But the biggest change beyond Wen's death is how the movie interprets the ending.

The Cabin at the End of the World leaves the reader to draw their own conclusion. The fathers, mourning the loss of their child, refuse to kill each other. Instead, they drive away from the cabin with Wen's body in the back towards an uncertain future. The film decides to take a more definitive approach and say the strangers were the heralds of the apocalypse, and Eric's choice to sacrifice himself saved billions of lives.

It's not like the classic "I see dead people" Bruce Willis twist or the other Bruce Willis twist from the Glass cinematic universe, but it does provide a new viewpoint.

Knock At The Cabin review: Dave Bautista is thoroughly ominous in tense apocalyptic thriller

M. night shyamalan discards his usual twists in favor of pure tension, turning in his best work in years.

Though it may not seem so at first glance, Knock At The Cabin is something of a departure from director M. Night Shyamalan ’s previous work. Adapting Paul Tremblay’s novel The Cabin At The End Of The World in a screenplay that he co-wrote with Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman, Shyamalan is certainly treading familiar thematic ground, most notably visited in 2002’s Signs . But the big revelation here is that, in contrast to 2021’s Old , he has seemingly grown beyond the need to build toward shocking revelations. Knock At The Cabin reaches the credits decidedly untwisted, but that doesn’t keep the film from building horrific tension through a devastating domestic hypothetical.

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DVD & Streaming

Knock at the Cabin

Horror , Mystery/Suspense , Thriller

Content Caution

In Theaters

February 3, 2023
Jonathan Groff as Eric; Ben Aldridge as Andrew; Kristen Cui as Wen; Dave Bautista as Leonard; Nikki Amuka-Bird as Sabrina; Abby Quinn as Adriane; Rupert Grint as Redmond

Home Release Date

February 21, 2023
M. Night Shyamalan

Distributor

Universal Pictures

Movie Review

Young Wen is catching grasshoppers outside the cabin when Leonard arrives. She knows she isn’t supposed to talk to strangers, but Leonard seems nice enough. But that’s when Leonard admits something.

“My heart is broken because of what I have to do today,” he tells her.

That’s when his friends arrive, each holding their own makeshift weapons. Wen rushes inside and alerts her two dads, Eric and Andrew. They hunker down and try to call the police.

“Sorry,” a woman’s voice apologetically says. “We had to cut the phone line.”

It’s not long before the four attackers have made their way into the cabin and tied Eric and Andrew up. That’s when Leonard begins his speech.

“Families throughout history have been chosen to make this decision. Your family must choose to willingly sacrifice one of the three of you to prevent the apocalypse. For every no you give us, hundreds of thousands of people are going to die.”

Positive Elements

Eric and Andrew demonstrate genuine love and care for their adopted daughter. They always look for ways to protect Wen, whether that’s by helping her escape or shielding her eyes from horrific sights.

Spiritual Elements

The four attackers here aren’t depicted as villainous murderers. Instead, they believe that what they’re doing is necessary to save the world. Following their initial attack, they do what they can to show Eric and Andrew their genuine grief.

Obviously, the film’s premise centers around needing a human sacrifice (presumably to a god) in order to prevent the apocalypse. Each attacker references having had visions that led them to each other and the cabin. They’ve also had visions of the apocalypse, and when certain moments occur, they gasp, shocked that what they saw in the vision is actually coming to pass.

As these religious zealots continue their ritual, they exclaim that “part of humanity has been judged,” and claim that the sacrifice is in order to atone for the “sins of humanity.” We’re told that such a sacrifice has been decided by families all throughout human history. Leonard says that God’s fingers will come down to “squash the Earth” if no sacrifice is given.

The whole thing is hard to process, which is why Sabrina, one of the attackers, tells Eric that she actually left the church long ago, believing religion to be just for a time when people were scared of things. But after she had her visions, she realized that there was something bigger than herself out in the universe. Regardless, she understands if Eric still thinks she’s a “religious freak.”

A hospital mural depicts Jesus playing soccer with children. We hear a reference to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from Revelation. Initially, Eric and Andrew believe the strangers are just Jehovah’s Witnesses. And after they attack, Andrew calls them “faith doomsayers.”

Sexual Content

Eric and Andrew are gay, and a portion of the film revolves around society’s reaction to their attraction to one another. In flashbacks, we see that Andrew’s parents meet Eric in uncomfortable silence, and the two pretend that Andrew is married to a woman in order to adopt a baby from a religious organization.

Andrew is convinced that the attack on them is homophobic in nature—a claim that the attackers dispute. Leonard later comments that he believes the “family was chosen because [their] love is so pure.” Wen talks about how she’s annoyed because her guidance counselor keeps telling her how great it is that she has two dads.

Violent Content

In an attempt to convince Eric and Andrew that the attackers’ claims about death and apocalypse are warranted, Leonard turns on the TV to various news reports (which Andrew believes have been prerecorded). One shows people on a beach being crushed by a massive tsunami. In another, we see people suffering from a disease; we’re told it has affected children in particular. We also see planes falling from the sky and exploding.

People are slashed, stabbed and shot. Though much of the carnage occurs just offscreen, we catch glimpses of the aftermath. Someone is hit in the head with weapons. One person’s corpse is hit with an axe. Another person’s throat is slit, and we see the resulting injury. Someone is stabbed in the leg and side. A man suffers a concussion. After being beaten, attacker Redmond’s face is covered in blood, and he mentions how his father used to hit him.

In a flashback, Andrew gets hit over the head with a bottle by an intoxicated man, presumably a hate crime because Andrew is gay. We see surgeons operating on his skull afterwards, though little blood or gore is seen.

We glimpse drawn images of apocalyptic scenes. Another attacker talks of the trauma she’s dealt with because of her visions. She describes how she sees her son burning alive at the end of the world. She and the other attackers agree that the worst part of their violent visions are the guttural screams they hear.

Crude or Profane Language

The f-word is used nearly 25 times, and the s-word is heard four times. We hear single instances each of “a–,” “b–ch,” “d-ck,” “h—” and “b–tard.” “Crap” is used twice. God’s name is abused seven times, including one pairing with “d–n.” Jesus’ name is taken in vain twice. Someone is called a “bigot.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Redmond mentions liking beer. An intoxicated man confronts Eric and Andrew in a bar.

Other Negative Elements

Leonard vomits offscreen. Wen references to a girl in Wen’s class who passes gas frequently.

“The end is near,” a doomsayer exclaims as the civilized folk walk by rolling their eyes. “Ah, just another one of the crazies,” they say, brushing off the dark prophecy. Besides, the man certainly looks crazy, sporting the signature disheveled hair, dirty clothes and distinct smell of a dumpster. He’s not exactly the kind of person you’d see reporting the evening news.

But what if it wasn’t just one doomsayer, but four? What if they all looked like pretty normal people? What if, other than their statements about the end times, they spoke pretty rationally? What if they all corroborated their stories and alleged visions of the Day of Wrath? And what if news outlets started to report the disasters they predicted?

Are they just a well-organized cult, prerecording news to gain followers and make a point? Or could they really be normal people who’ve been given visions of an incoming apocalypse?

Knock at the Cabin doesn’t stray far from its physical cabin setting. Protagonists Eric and Andrew can’t: They’ve been tied up. But it may surprise viewers that the movie stays focused on answering those apocalyptic questions. That’s especially true, considering that director M. Night Shyamalan is known for being someone who drags his viewers through twists and turns, revealing layer after layer of what’s really happening. In that regard, it’s a strangely refreshing turn of events for a Shyamalan plot—even one that centers on a threat of world-ending stakes—to be relatively simple.

Despite all of that, however, Knock at the Cabin comes with quite a few knocks of its own. Though the worst of the violence is committed offscreen, we’ll still catches glimpses of the bloody aftermath. Our protagonists are a pair of married men. And, of course, there’s the spiritual component of an unknown pagan god demanding a human sacrifice, lest it destroy the world.

Shyamalan’s decades-long direction of supernatural thrillers has both captivated and disappointed audiences, with critical scores ranging from overwhelmingly positive to decisively negative. So while you may be tempted to invite Knock at the Cabin inside when its knuckles rap upon your door, you might want to consider keeping it locked out.

Kennedy Unthank

Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”

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Knock At The Cabin Review

03 Feb 2023

Knock At The Cabin

After spectral therapists, agriculturally-inclined aliens and homicidal house plants, it’s quite refreshing to be confronted by an M. Night Shyamalan production in which the most ridiculous thing is the luxurious in-house library at an Airbnb. The film’s remote getaway (4.96 rating — Wi-Fi, free parking and end-of-days cultists included) is a bolt-hole to die for. It is, in fact, the perfect place for Eric ( Jonathan Groff ), Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and Wen (Kristen Cui) to spend some family time in the bosom of mother nature. It’s also, at first glance, an eye-rollingly tired setting for a bit of stabby-stabby horror. But Shyamalan is never one to do things by the book, and this eschatological thriller, like its setting, has more going on than a cursory glance at its listing would suggest.

Adapted from Paul Tremblay’s harrowing 2018 novel The Cabin At The End Of The World (with a script by Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman, re-written by Shyamalan), this is a tighter, simpler tale than many of the filmmaker’s original flights of fancy. It also wastes no time whatsoever. We’ve barely a moment to catch our breath before the family’s arboreal paradise is swiftly upended**,** an oppressive and sinister air descending after less than five minutes of screen time. Wen, gleefully catching grasshoppers in the woods, sees the hulking form of Leonard ( Dave Bautista ), trudging towards her in a crisp, short-sleeved missionary shirt and looking like a headliner for Mormon Summerslam. He is swiftly joined by companions Sabrina ( Nikki Amuka-Bird ), Redmond ( Rupert Grint ) and Adriane (Abby Quinn) — each wielding a medieval-looking instrument of torture — who inform the family they have a particularly difficult choice to make.

Bautista perfectly undercuts Leonard’s physical menace with an almost childlike tenderness that’s chilling in its affable restraint.

The secluded location and home invasion setup might be old as the hills but that’s the extent to which Knock At The Cabin agrees to play by standard rules. This isn’t a horror that trades in shock and gore, adopting instead a deceptively soft, almost gentle air as it lays out the boundless monstrosity of the family’s quandary. The bursts of savage violence, when they come, are potent but never lurid, relying on psychological wounds over splatter to make their point.

Paranoia, denial and twisted attempts at persuasion are the film’s primary tools, character and performance packing far more punch than the 9mm pistol locked out of reach in the boot of Andrew’s car. Groff and Aldridge’s rising panic is palpable, fuelling the suffocating tension, which mounts almost without respite over the course of 100 agonising minutes. Bautista is the standout, though, here gifted what seems like more lines than all his previous screen roles combined. He perfectly undercuts Leonard’s physical menace with an almost childlike tenderness that’s chilling in its affable restraint — all politeness and consideration, even when staving in skulls.

Book fans might be disappointed to see some of the source material’s edges sanded off (the title change a deliberate attempt to distance this adaptation), and not all of Shyamalan’s choices land as intended (an M. Night cameo involving an air fryer being particularly ill-judged), but this is a brutally stressful and effective thriller that doesn’t need a third-act rug-pull to leave the audience breathless.

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Official Discussion - Knock at the Cabin [SPOILERS]

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While vacationing, a girl and her parents are taken hostage by armed strangers who demand that the family make a choice to avert the apocalypse.

M. Night Shyamalan

M. Night Shyamalan, Steve Desmond, Michael Sherman

Dave Bautista as Leonard

Jonathan Groff as Eric

Ben Aldridge as Andrew

Nikki Amuka-Bird as Sabrina

Rupert Grint as Redmond

Abby Quinnn as Ardiane

-- Rotten Tomatoes: 71%

Metacritic: 62

VOD: Theaters

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M. Night Shyamalan’s KNOCK AT THE CABIN Gets One Final Poster

Last Updated on March 16, 2024 by Scott Wampler

With M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin (based on Paul Tremblay’s best-selling novel Cabin at the End of the World , in case you hadn’t heard) mere weeks away from hitting theaters, the film’s marketing campaign is entering its final stages. We’ve already seen a teaser, a trailer, and a few different posters … which must mean its time for Universal to drop the “retro” poster for Shyamalan’s latest.

Oh, here it is now!

Knock at the Cabin ‘s other posters have, admittedly, been stronger than the usual one-sheets we see these days, but (as has been the case with other “retro” or “less Photoshop, more drawn and impressionistic” posters we’ve seen in the past) we can’t help but wonder why the poster above wasn’t the first one out of the gate! We’re particularly fond of Dave Bautista’s character getting a silhouette that takes up the entire space between the forefinger and thumb of that ghastly hand.

For anyone just joining the Knock at the Cabin conversation, here’s an official plot synopsis:

“While vacationing at a remote cabin, a young girl and her parents are taken hostage by four armed strangers who demand that the family make an unthinkable choice to avert the apocalypse. With limited access to the outside world, the family must decide what they believe before all is lost.”

Knock at the Cabin , starring the aforementioned Dave Bautista along with Rupert Grint, Jonathan Groff, Nikki Amuka-Bird (from Shyamalan’s previous film, Old ) and Ben Aldridge, arrives on February 3rd, which gives you just enough time to read Tremblay’s novel – y’know, for compare-and-contrast purposes – when Shyamalan’s film hits theaters! Stay tuned for further Knock at the Cabin updates as they roll in, folks. There’s probably more where the above came from.

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How Paul Tremblay mined a lifelong love of scary films to craft new novel 'Horror Movie'

For high school math teacher turned author Paul Tremblay , a lifetime of watching scary movies has led to an acclaimed bibliography full of enjoyably creepy horror novels.

So with the title of his latest being “ Horror Movie ,” you know Tremblay’s not messing around. This spin on the “cursed film” trope centers on an art-house flick made in 1993 by a group of indie filmmakers but never released, outside of a few scenes put online. A fandom has grown around its legend, to the point that it’s being remade, and the only surviving member of the cast – who played a masked teen called “the Thin Kid” – is a producer. Through past and present perspectives, and the script of the film, Tremblay’s book is a slow-burn narrative of creative egos, disturbing circumstances and the tragedy at the heart of the original production.

Tremblay didn’t read for fun until his 20s, “so my very nascent early understanding of story and story structure was all through movies,” says the author, whose 2018 book “The Cabin at the End of the World” was adapted by M. Night Shyamalan into last year’s “ Knock at the Cabin .” Writing “Horror Movie” was “getting to break that apart and try to make a horror movie be a part of a book.”

The 52-year-old Tremblay, who’s working on the middle-grade horror novel “Another” (coming in 2025), runs down the cinematic chillers that influenced “Horror Movie” and inspired his own writing over the years.

Review: Stephen King knows 'You Like It Darker' and obliges with sensational new tales

‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ was the initial ‘Horror Movie’ inspiration

Tremblay’s original impetus for “Horror Movie” came from an online conversation he saw about the 1974 slasher classic that mentioned the 2013 book “Chain Saw Confidential,” Leatherface actor Gunnar Hansen’s first-person account of what happened when making the movie. “It just sent me down a ‘Chain Saw’ rabbit hole. I read that book and they took so many chances on set, like what would've happened if the chainsaw slipped?” Tremblay says. “Then I just started thinking about the 1970s and the ‘90s, people making an independent movie and something went wrong, and that was just really the start of it.” (A chainsaw also heavily factors into the plot of “Horror Movie.”)

Tremblay mined “that raw, almost desperate energy" of indie horror movies, be it the arty works of A24 – the company known for the likes of “The Witch” and “Hereditary” – or the Dutch film “Borgman,” a “weird, messed-up movie” about a drifter taken in by an upper-class family. “I definitely wanted some of that same messed-upness” in "Horror Movie," he says.

Tremblay surrounded himself with possession films for ‘A Head Full of Ghosts’

When writing one of his books or short stories, Tremblay tries to tailor his entertainment consumption and surroundings to stuff that best serves his project. For 2015’s “ A Head Full of Ghosts ,” about a possibly possessed teenage girl featured on a reality TV show, Tremblay watched and rewatched “The Exorcist” and others of its ilk.

“I’m usually reading things that I think will sort of inspire ideas, too," he says. "I'm not too worried about the intrusion of other voices. In fact, I enjoy getting unexpected sparks from things.” (A movie version of “A Head Full of Ghosts,” which “scared the living hell” out of Stephen King , is in the works from producer Robert Downey Jr. and “Goodnight Mommy” directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala.)

‘The Cabin from the End of the World’ spawned from home invasion movies

Admittedly a “longtime scaredy cat,” Tremblay’s love of horror stemmed from watching 1950s and ‘60s black-and-white movies like “The Killer Shrews” that “would give me nightmares” when he was 7. To this day, he doesn’t like home invasion movies, “partly because they're so icky, they're so scary,” he says, but the ones Tremblay digs – the French film “Them,” “Hush” and the old Audrey Hepburn film “Wait Until Dark” – inspired him to do a book version of one with “The Cabin at the End of the World.”

“It was more messing around with, oh, it'd be really weird if the strangers showed up and started killing each other instead of the family," Tremblay says. "Why would they do that? That was just sort of a little bit of a logic puzzle for me."

‘Knock at the Cabin’ turned into a meta influence for Tremblay’s ‘Horror Movie’

The author visited the set of Shayamalan’s “Cabin” adaptation, which featured a significantly different ending than the book, and the author's experience so far in the movie industry informed the filmmaking bits of “Horror Movie” where the older Thin Kid is dealing with producers and directors to get a movie made. “I have enjoyed it, but it has been weird. It's been super-stressful at times, too,” Tremblay says. “The business side of it still just makes zero sense to me. That's fine, maybe it's not supposed to make sense to me.”

The writer admits some of the “Horror Movie” stuff is from personal stories, while others are anecdotal from other authors: “We novelists don't have a union so when weird things happen in Hollywood, our only revenge is to write about it."

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The Strangers: Chapter 1

After their car breaks down in an eerie small town, a young couple is forced to spend the night in a remote cabin. Panic ensues as they are terrorized by three masked strangers who strike wi... Read all After their car breaks down in an eerie small town, a young couple is forced to spend the night in a remote cabin. Panic ensues as they are terrorized by three masked strangers who strike with no mercy and seemingly no motive. After their car breaks down in an eerie small town, a young couple is forced to spend the night in a remote cabin. Panic ensues as they are terrorized by three masked strangers who strike with no mercy and seemingly no motive.

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The Strangers Chapter 1 (Movie Review) | Ep. 6 | Four Dead Losers Four Dead Losers

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When a couple headed to Portland pulls over for a bite to eat, they are met with an unfriendly greeting from the people of Venus, Oregon. When they decide to hit the road again, they experience car troubles which lands them in a cabin overnight. When enjoying their stay, a knock at the door has a stranger asking, "Is Tamara home?" Join the Four Dead Losers as they discuss The Strangers Chapter One. Thank you for tuning in! What were your thoughts on this film? Let us know in the comment section! If you have a movie you'd like us to review, leave a comment below and we just might make a TikTok dedicated to your pick! - Four Dead Losers Want to connect elsewhere? TIKTOK: www.tiktok.com/@fourdeadlosers

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Knock at the Cabin 2023 Movie Review and Trailer
Knock at the Cabin movie review: Shyamalan’s latest is half-baked and
'Knock at the Cabin' Review: M. Night Shyamalan Delivers B-Movie
Movie Review: M. Night Shyamalan brings signature touch, good and bad
KNOCK AT THE CABIN
Knock At The Cabin

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Knock at the Cabin (2023) Recap
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Knock At The Cabin Movie Review
KNOCK AT THE CABIN Tries To Trick You

COMMENTS

Knock at the Cabin movie review (2023)
His latest, "Knock at the Cabin," uses the question of human behavior during the threat of end times to create a morality study that progressively hollows itself out. It's another minor work from a director whose films, especially after "After Earth," have been mostly major. It's a shame that the story isn't so good, because the ...
Knock at the Cabin
Rated: A-Jul 25, 2023 Full Review Courtney Lanning WCSH "Knock at the Cabin" is a well-made movie, and there's not a bad performance in the entire film. But Bautista steals the show...
'Knock at the Cabin' Review: Who's There? The Apocalypse
Feb. 2, 2023. Knock at the Cabin. Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Horror, Mystery, Thriller. R. 1h 40m. Find Tickets. When you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site ...
Knock at the Cabin (2023)
Knock at the Cabin: Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. With Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Nikki Amuka-Bird. While vacationing, a girl and her parents are taken hostage by armed strangers who demand that the family make a choice to avert the apocalypse.
Knock at the Cabin
Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 24, 2023. Tina Kakadelis Beyond the Cinerama Dome. Knock at the Cabin is middle-of-the-road fare for Shyamalan. It doesn't reach his directorial heights ...
'Knock at the Cabin' Review: What If the Twist Was There Is No Twist?
'Knock at the Cabin' Review: No Surprise, M. Night Shyamalan's Latest Is Long, Slow and Disappointing Reviewed at AMC The Grove, Los Angeles, Jan. 31, 2023. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 100 MIN.
Knock at the Cabin First Reviews: Dave Bautista Shines in M. Night
When M. Night Shymalan comes knocking, fans of twisty thrillers answer. The writer and director's latest, Knock at the Cabin, should be met by his usual crowd, given that its premise contains yet another suspenseful scenario.In the movie, four strangers show up at a family's cabin claiming that the end of the world is near.
Knock at the Cabin Review
Verdict. Knock at the Cabin fails to knock the classic cabin in the woods horror methods out of the park. M. Night Shyamalan abides by unfittingly formulaic standards and produces a tonal ...
'Knock at the Cabin' Review: Dave Bautista Saves M. Night Shyamalan
In. Knock at the Cabin, a Terrific Dave Bautista Saves M. Night Shyamalan From Himself. Dave Bautista gives a career-best performance as a messenger of the apocalypse. M. Night Shyamalan movies ...
Knock At The Cabin Review: Shyamalan Delivers Thought-Provoking
M. Night Shyamalan is back with Knock at the Cabin, a horror mystery that transpires in one location and ramps up the tension in interesting ways.Based on The Cabin at the End of the World, the 2018 novel by Paul G. Tremblay, Shyamalan's latest film — co-written by him, Steve Desmond, and Michael Sherman — is harrowing and intriguing. Though it lingers on the surface with regard to its ...
Knock at the Cabin
Oct 30, 2023. Knock at the Cabin is a mid-range movie under the leadership of Bautista that keeps the tension in The Cabin to the fullest but loses its credibility when it comes to high CGI disasters on television. The movie's biggest plus is that I didn't get bored while watching it.
Knock at the Cabin
Knock at the Cabin is a 2023 American apocalyptic psychological horror film written, directed and produced by M. Night Shyamalan, who wrote the screenplay from an initial draft by Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman.It is based on the 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul G. Tremblay, the first adaptation of one of his works.The film stars Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben ...
Knock at the Cabin Is a Solemn, Preachy Horror Film
Shyamalan and fellow screenwriters Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman have adapted the movie from Paul G. Tremblay's 2018 horror novel The Cabin at the End of the World, though it appears they ...
Knock at the Cabin Movie Review
Our review: Parents say ( 8 ): Kids say ( 16 ): M. Night Shyamalan 's horror-thriller makes terrific use of its intimate scale and level-headed approach, generating suspense through suggestion and surprising empathy for the characters. Shyamalan doesn't usually do adaptations, but here he lets Paul Tremblay's novel The Cabin at the End of the ...
"Knock at the Cabin," Reviewed: Be Nice to the QAnoners, or They'll Do
The movie's answer is a sickening one. "Knock at the Cabin" is an adaptation—or rather an extreme transformation—of the novel "The Cabin at the End of the World," by Paul Tremblay ...
Movie Review: 'Knock at the Cabin,' From M. Night Shyamalan
Movie Review: In 'Knock at the Cabin,' Dave Bautista and a trio of strangers (including Rupert Grint) terrorize a family and insist that only they can avert the apocalypse. Terrifying and ...
Review: 'Knock at the Cabin' is peak-form Shyamalan, a ...
Dave Bautista, Nikki Amuka-Bird, and Rupert Grint are shown in a scene from the movie, "Knock At The Cabin." Universal Pictures You feel the tension between the two daddies, both avid to protect ...
Knock at the Cabin ending explained: How M. Night Shyamalan twist
Ben Aldridge, Jonathan Groff, and Kristen Cui star as a terrorized family in 'Knock at the Cabin'. Universal Pictures. The entire movie is meant to keep the audience guessing.
Knock At The Cabin review: Dave Bautista is perfectly ominous
Even so, Knock At The Cabin is a harrowing and intense home invasion thriller that feels like a step in the right direction for Shyamalan. Even knowing the beats of the source material, it's ...
Knock at the Cabin
Movie Review. Young Wen is catching grasshoppers outside the cabin when Leonard arrives. She knows she isn't supposed to talk to strangers, but Leonard seems nice enough. ... Knock at the Cabin doesn't stray far from its physical cabin setting. Protagonists Eric and Andrew can't: They've been tied up. But it may surprise viewers that ...
Knock At The Cabin
Knock At The Cabin Review. Eric (Groff), Andrew (Aldridge) and their seven-year-old daughter Wen (Cui) decide to get away from it all at an idyllic cabin in the woods. Their bliss is cut short ...
Knock at the Cabin
Chris Stuckmann reviews Knock at the Cabin, starring Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Kristen Cui, Abby Quinn Rupert Grint. Dir...
Official Discussion
Summary: While vacationing, a girl and her parents are taken hostage by armed strangers who demand that the family make a choice to avert the apocalypse. Director: M. Night Shyamalan. Writers: M. Night Shyamalan, Steve Desmond, Michael Sherman. Cast: Dave Bautista as Leonard.
A Full Commentary on 'Knock at the Cabin' with the Cast and Crew
A Full Commentary on 'Knock at the Cabin' with the Cast and Crew Hollywood Insider Staff Writer Hollywood Insider is a media network that focuses on substance and meaningful entertainment/culture, so as to utilize media as a tool to unite and better our world, by combining entertainment, education and philanthropy, while being against ...
Knock At The Cabin's Abby Quinn Waited 14 Years For The Horror Role
Adapted from Paul G. Tremblay's 2018 novel "The Cabin at the End of the World," Shyamalan's entry in the tradition of cabin-based horror movies follows a small family -- two dads and their young ...
M. Night Shyamalan's KNOCK AT THE CABIN Gets One Final Poster
By Scott Wampler January 12, 2023 5:34 pm. With M. Night Shyamalan's Knock at the Cabin (based on Paul Tremblay's best-selling novel Cabin at the End of the World, in case you hadn't heard) mere weeks away from hitting theaters, the film's marketing campaign is entering its final stages. We've already seen a teaser, a trailer, and a ...
'Horror Movie': Paul Tremblay novel mines author's love of scary films
With a book title like "Horror Movie," you best come with a love of scary movies. ... whose 2018 book "The Cabin at the End of the World" was adapted by M. Night Shyamalan into last year's ...
The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024)
The Strangers: Chapter 1: Directed by Renny Harlin. With Ryan Bown, Matus Lajcak, Olivia Kreutzova, Letizia Fabbri. After their car breaks down in an eerie small town, a young couple is forced to spend the night in a remote cabin. Panic ensues as they are terrorized by three masked strangers who strike with no mercy and seemingly no motive.
The Strangers Chapter 1 (Movie Review)
When a couple headed to Portland pulls over for a bite to eat, they are met with an unfriendly greeting from the people of Venus, Oregon. When they decide to hit the road again, they experience car troubles which lands them in a cabin overnight. When enjoying their stay, a knock at the door has a st…