Knock at the Cabin

M. Night Shyamalan's latest, starring Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, and Dave Bautista, is a sometimes tense but largely cumbersome parable about modern ...

[Jonathan Groff](https://time.com/4974879/mindhunter-review-netflix/)) and Daddy Andrew ( [Ben Aldridge](https://time.com/6238250/michael-ausiello-spoiler-alert-interview/)), though they read her chatter as a kid’s fantasy. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Yet the movie does the same thing, penning this modern but not so out-of-the ordinary family into their own little petting zoo. Aldridge and Groff are good enough actors to pull all of this off without undue sentimentality. 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. With Knock at the Cabin Shyamalan may be trying to change minds and hearts, even more than he’s trying to scare us. This sounds like a bad bargain to Wen, let alone to the audience, and she runs to warn her fathers, Daddy Eric (

“Wow,” I thought. “The man really has made some terrible films.” But if ever a creator was critic-proof, Shyamalan surely is. As shoddy and unsightly as his ...

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

Whether you’re more concerned with the fate of one family or the fate of the world, Knock At The Cabin may just make you question how you’d handle such an impossible choice. Though Shyamalan resists the urge to turn his climax into a trademark twist, he does opt for a more concrete answer to the questionable apocalypse, and ultimately finds an angle to resolve the tension in a less haunting manner than Tremblay. Even knowing the beats of the source material, it’s easy to get caught up in the intensity of the scenario, to see doubt waver over the conviction of every character as they grapple with a potentially distorted reality. This obviously ludicrous claim serves as the basis for a contained scenario that undermines the characters’ sense of reality. With a now-captive audience, the clearly remorseful Leonard presents the family with a choice: they must choose one of the three of them as a willing sacrifice, or else a series of plagues will consume humanity. Despite her attempts to warn her parents, the strangers break into the cabin, subduing Eric and Andrew in the process.

A couple named Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge) are vacationing at a secluded Pennsylvania cabin (meaning no mobile phone reception) with their ...

Shyamalan brings the full weight of this grim scenario to bear on his characters in a screenplay (written by him off an earlier draft by Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman) that is largely faithful to Tremblay’s book for about the first two-thirds of the movie. Knowing that what he’s doing is wrong, but driven nonetheless to do it, Leonard is a combination of unsettling rationality and emotionality that marks this as perhaps Bautista’s best performance to date. [his Harry Potter days](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/harry-potter-20th-anniversary-special-a-return-to-hogwarts-doesnt-address-the-hippogriff-in-the-room/) as one can imagine). Shyamalan’s work can be an acquired taste, and even among his fans his output can be hit and miss ( [like 2021’s divisive Old](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/old-review-m-night-shyamalan-another-happening/)), but his new film, Knock at the Cabin, is easily his strongest effort since the [still-potent Split](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/split-review/) and may yet end up on the top shelf of his 15 feature films to date. A couple named Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge) are vacationing at a secluded Pennsylvania cabin (meaning no mobile phone reception) with their eight-year-old adopted daughter Wen (Kristen Cui) when the child is approached out front by a massive, hulking stranger named Leonard ( [The Last Airbender](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-last-airbender-what-went-wrong/) around a decade ago, [M.

It may be the end of the world as we know it in "Knock at the Cabin." But, unlike R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, no one in this offbeat but effective thriller ...

As will already be apparent, however, the revelations mentioned in the script Shyamalan penned with Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman diverge significantly from Biblical prophecy. It’s also been revealed to them that this cataclysm can only be averted if one of their captives is selected by the others to be killed in sacrifice. Could the strangers, in fact, be telling the truth? He also elicits forceful performances that help make the fantastic nature of his main characters’ quandary more believable. Instead, working from Paul Tremblay’s bestseller “The Cabin at the End of the World,” director and co-writer M. Neither will any viewer who comes to the film without the mature discernment needed to sort through its ethically complex content.

Wondering how to watch Knock at the Cabin? We have all of the details on the latest M. Night Shyamalan movie, from showtimes to streaming info.

Knock at the Cabin was written by M. Knock at the Cabin will be in most theaters across the U.S. This would put Knock at the Cabin's streaming debut sometime before June 3. Night Shyamalan based on Paul Tremblay's novel The Cabin at the End of the World. With limited access to the outside world, the family must decide what they believe before all is lost. The writer-director's latest, Knock at the Cabin, takes viewers deep into the woods for an apocalyptic hostage story.

M. Night Shyamalan's latest loopy thriller begins with an intriguingly sinister premise: that a family must kill one of its own to ensure humanity's ...

[20% off your next online order - Walmart coupon code](https://www.wsj.com/coupons/walmart) Shyamalan also carries the unfortunate distinction of having perpetrated more terrible movies than practically anyone else in his class of blockbuster auteurs: “The Village,” “Lady in the Water,” “The Last Airbender,” “After Earth.” This list is not comprehensive. Night Shyamalan is one of the few filmmakers of his generation who has made himself a brand.