M. Night Shyamalan Delivers a Really Great Thriller with "Knock at the Cabin"

Knock at the Cabin is the newest film from writer/director M. Night Shyamalan, and from the moment of its announcement, I was already in. I'm a huge fan of M. Night; those who know me know that the man is easily one of my favorite filmmakers to date. The guy takes big swings with his projects, not all of them landing, but the attempts are respectable and worth checking out every time. The thing that I probably love most about his work is that most of them are original pieces. It's when he adapts other works that they can sometimes feel off. I haven't read (yet) Paul Tremblay's novel The Cabin at the End of the World, which this film is based on, so I can't yet speak to whether this adaptation follows suit with Shyamalan's other adaptations. What I can say though, having seen the film, is that this movie is a great reminder why so many fell in love with his movies earlier in his career...because it's really good.

Briefly, the story centers around a family on vacation. They're staying in a cabin out in the woods far from civilization, enjoying the peace from a busy distraction-filled life, when they are visited by four strangers carrying menacing weapon-like objects. These strangers break in, tie them up, and explain to them that they must choose to sacrifice one of their family members, or risk bringing to pass the end of the world. This is a straight up thriller that keeps you guessing the whole way through as to whether or not the events unfolding are real or if there's something other going on. Shyamalan has played around with apocalyptic scenarios before, with his heavily criticized The Happening. What that movie lacked, in comparison, despite its faults, was cohesiveness and atmosphere. Knock at the Cabin has this in spades. Couple that with some really great performances, and we've got ourselves a great time out to the cinema!

Dave Bautista plays Leonard, the leader of the four strangers, and his performance here is really great. The man has been in some really epic films and has delivered really great performances before. But being a man of great size and hulkiness, these performances are often combined with action and stunts. We get none of that here. This is a role we haven't really seen him take on, with immense amount of dialogue and emotional beats, and it was really great to watch. The small cast, as a whole, gave really wonderful performances, especially Jonathan Groff and young Kristen Cui who plays the daughter Wen, but Dave Bautista was the standout for me.

Some of Shyamalan's movies often suffer from really stilted dialogue and immense exposition, (I'm looking at you, Old), but the writing here really works, and the emotional weight of the decisions being made by the characters felt real. There were moments in the narrative that did feel "convenient" and a few of the flashbacks that occur - meant to infuse levity to the weightiness of the situation - I think were also meant to hold more weight to the end than it did, but all of that didn't deter my experience. I really enjoyed this movie a lot. What Shyamalan does with the camera at times is true to form with his style, often allowing harrowing things to happen just off camera to allow the imagination to do the work, or the skewed camera angles to make the whole situation feel off; it all totally works in creating this heightened emotional tenseness to the piece.

I'm really curious about the novel, and so I imagine I'll read it at some point. But despite the few off-kilter things about this movie, my overall feeling is that I really, really dug it. I'll champion any of M. Night Shyamalan's films, and this one is no different. With beautiful cinematography, a compelling narrative, and really great performances, Knock at the Cabin is a surefire win in my book. Go see it.