Knock at the Cabin (2023)

 

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I am mildly unimpressed. Yeah, that's the main reaction of this movie here. With “Knock at the Cabin” we get a standard apocalypse movie courtesy of M. Night Shyamalan. And the result is just a big predictable mess from when we saw the first trailer. There are quite a few good things that are present here, like the production value, and the themes explored, but the overall tone and quality is not that great. It feels as if this movie took an awesome concept, and just took it to a rather bland territory. While not the worst film out there, “Knock at the Cabin” is a rather boring experience that really plays it safe with its topics. And not in a good way.

The story involves a family consisting of two gay men named Andrew and Eric (Ben Aldridge and Jonathan Groff respectively), along with their young daughter Wen (Kristen Cui) going to spend some quality time at a cabin the woods. Everything goes well until four complete strangers come along. These four strangers are Leonard (Dave Bautista), Adriane (Abby Quinn), Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), and Redmond (Rupert Grint). Together, the four of them kidnap and hold hostage Andrew, Eric and Wen as they try to prevent the apocalypse from happening.

“Knock at the Cabin” is definitely something that starts off strong, but just doesn't get to where it needs to go.

What I mean by this is that the movie is very predictable with its story. There is a lot of knowing exactly what is going to happen, and there really are no major twists. Which is considered a big Shyamalan staple, but here, he tones it down a few notches. This may contributed to the fact that he co-wrote the film with writers Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman, and that can be a little to Shyamalan fans. This is also a problem due to the fact that the audience doesn't really know much of the characters presented here; Redmond is the first to die, and we barely know him.

And speaking of the violence, it is pretty tame considering that this is supposed to be a horror film. Don't get me wrong, there is blood on the big screen, but it is very minimal, and not shown enough. This is mostly due to the camera panning away from the action, and letting the audience try and figure out what is going on. Which transitions to another problem: the camera. It can get blurry, especially during the beginning, and the repeated use of close up shots is annoying. In the overall grand scheme of things, “Knock at the Cabin” is a pretty tame horror flick.

Because of the predictability, you might become bored with the overall experience. Again, mostly due to the fact that you don't care for most of these characters. I wouldn't be surprised if you fall asleep during the production.

With that said, there are a few things that keep “Knock at the Cabin” from turning bad.

For one thing, the acting isn't too bad; it's not over-the-top bad like a lot of other Shyamalan productions (“Old”, for example, is one of those), and each actor is giving it their all. The ones that stand out are Bautista and Cui, who do a good job with what they are given. Everyone else is either good or okay. And with such a minimalist cast, it is actually surprising to see the movie not get a bigger budget than a lot of other productions.

The cinematography is decent enough, and the woods of New Jersey do stand out from the rest.

The themes explored in “Knock at the Cabin” are definitely ones to bring up in conversations. From sacrifice, to believing if it is the end of the world or not, the film does explore those concepts. As a matter fact, the character of Andrew is the only one of the group to believe that all of the events happening in the movie are not real. Which does raise the possibility of losing faith in the process. Also, when the tragic events are happening, some of them do hit close to home, like a virus outbreak, for instance.

Again, the film does go into depth as to what leads to these moments happening, but the problem is, you more than likely just don't care.

In conclusion, “Knock at the Cabin” does try to present a decent end of the world scenario. But it doesn't live out to its full potential. .If the world does end, then I do not want it to be like what is presented here.