Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Knock at the Cabin’ on Peacock, M. Night Shyamalan’s Almost-Satisfying Psycho-thriller

M. Night Shyamalan proves he’s still Hitchocky with Knock at the Cabin (now on Peacock, but it’s also streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video), another taut, divisive psych-out thriller for a filmography stacked with them. Adapting Paul G. Tremblay’s novel The Cabin at the End of the World, Twistmeister General Shyamalan once again has us questioning the reality of a narrative, this time with a story about a vacationing family held hostage by four individuals claiming the apocalypse is nigh, and they all have to work to do something about it, and it ain’t gonna be pleasant. I dunno, man – this one gives me some heavy The Happening vibes, but the probability of this movie, or any movie for that matter, being worse than that is slim, right? God, I hope so.

KNOCK AT THE CABIN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Adorable little girl Wen (Kristen Cui) snatches a grasshopper, puts it in a jar and gives it a name. Hopefully, it’ll become friends with the other grasshoppers in there, and isn’t a MAGA C.H.U.D. grasshopper who’ll make the more reasonable and grounded grasshoppers uncomfortable. The grasshoppers-in-a-jar scenario becomes metaphorical when Leonard (Dave Bautista) walks up the path and greets Wen. She’s leery – don’t talk to strangers, and all that – as he helps her catch the insects and says you have to be gentle and try not to spook them. And being gentle and trying not to spook them is exactly what Leonard and his cohorts Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Redmond (Rupert Grint) and Adriane (Abby Quinn) try to do when they home-invade the lovely and very, very remote cabin that Wen and her dads Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge) rented for vacation. They’re carrying very strange weapons that look homemade, the type that dudes on the covers of black metal albums brandish in an attempt to look tough and scary even though they’re just Dungeons and Dragons nerds who rarely emerge from the basement. 

Anyway, so much for not spooking anyone, right? Eric and Andrew grab fireplace pokers and prop furniture in front of doorways but it doesn’t keep the weirdos out. Weirdos who tie up the two men and also sweep up the glass from the windows they broke to get inside, because they’re conscientious guests. Leonard’s tone is unerringly congenial, like he’s a kind soul with a very difficult job to do, which he calls the most important job ever. Dunno if that’s more unsettling than Redmond’s angry and mean demeanor because, hey, at least Redmond isn’t potentially being duplicitous. Hold that thought as we work through a few flashbacks, where Eric and Andrew face some adversity for being a gay couple, whether they’re facing Eric’s disapproving parents or fibbing that they’re brothers-in-law so they can adopt baby Wen from a Chinese orphanage. These scenes conclude with affirming moments in which they express mutual commitment to their relationship.

Back to the cabin. After some vague comments from the abductors like “our choices make our destiny” and “it’s almost time,” Leonard explains what the eff is going on: Eric, Andrew and Wen are a family “chosen” for sacrifice, to benefit the greater good. One must die or the entire planet will be apocalypse’d, if not now, then very soon. Eric, Andrew and Wen have to choose who gets it, and either Eric, Andrew or Wen has to do the killing. Leonard and co. had “visions” of all this, and are apparently here to make sure this nastiness gets done with the proper procedural execution, lest the world go kaflooey. These weirdos have to be several forks, a slotted spoon, two cheese knives and a melon baller shy of a full cutlery drawer, right? Of course. But we’re not sure if the question of their sanity gets any clearer after they do some insane shit to prove how committed they are to their little endeavor, then insist that what happens inside the cabin has something to do with TV news reports about large chunks of Earth’s population biting it via devastating earthquakes or a sudden surge of a deadly virus. It soon becomes clear that Andrew is the skeptic and Eric is sort of a believer, although the latter was concussed during the break-in, so his shit is always on shaky ground. So. Which are you? Skeptic? Believer? Or are you going for a third option, Shyamalan hater?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Knock is The Cabin in the Woods meets The Happening with a Cube-like single-location thought-experiment concept, a what’s-going-on-with-the-rest-of-the-world armageddon premise a la The Mist and a few The Impossible and Signs vibes.

Performance Worth Watching: Bautista’s earnest, mostly-gentle-giant performance here will likely upgrade his acting status from underrated to fully rated. He shows some subtle dramatic chops here that round out the spot-on comic timing he showed in the Guardians of the Galaxy films and Glass Onion. 

Memorable Dialogue: If only:

Wen: He says they have the most important job in the history of the world.

Eric, sighing: Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Knock at the Cabin marks progress for Shyamalan, who’s previous twist-riddled thrillers never dug so deep into a core philosophical idea. Namely: Do you believe what you see, or what you feel? Andrew is the resident pragmatist who holds tight to the correlation-without-causation notion – the global tragedies they see on the news can’t possibly have anything to do with what happens in this cabin among a few folks who are naught but randos among a population of billions. He’ll poke holes in your bullshit all day. But what if there’s some greater force at work in the world? Destiny or whatever? It’s a classic scenario for a character like Eric to endure a blow to the head and feel, you know, touched. 

Shyamalan exploits this hypothesis with his signature visual techniques, maximizing the general air of unease with a series of canted close-ups or snappy edits. He sets the hook with a string of strong opening sequences and keeps us compelled by slowly moving the plot forward and teasing us with bits of information. He’s as strong a visual craftsman as ever, a master manipulator who toys with his audience with the winking acerbity of his idol Hitchcock. Shyamalan hasn’t wound the tension this tight in a couple of decades – at least since Signs – and hasn’t nurtured a subtle performance, in this case Bautista’s, since The Sixth Sense.

However, Shyamalan struggles to bring together the film’s strongest components in a satisfying manner. The conclusion he reaches is more deflating than revelatory or exhilarating. The people here don’t always work as functional characters; the abductees feel like ciphers and the abductors, Bautista’s Leonard excluded, never transcend their roles as And there’s always the problem of Shyamalan being a silent character in his films, his mere presence as a director often nudging us out of the story: When’s the twist coming? He’s got us involved in this high-concept predicament, how will he get us out? That’s a matter to be overcome not with one film (Old certainly didn’t do it) but a string of them, and Knock at the Cabin may be the first to divert, ever so slightly, from his long-held formula. 

Our Call: STREAM IT. Knock at the Cabin has enough going for it to warrant a watch. But it’d be wise to keep your expectations modest. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.