A Review of “Knock at the Cabin (2023)”

 

Knock at the Cabin is the next film from director M. Night Shyamalan. I was worried about this movie as his previous movie Old (2021) wasted a good premise. Like his previous movie, this has an interesting premise as well. The premise is “a family vacationing at a remote cabin are suddenly held hostage by four strangers, who demand something unimaginable”. Does he deliver this time or is this another flop to add to the director’s career?

Firstly, Dave Bautista is terrific as Leonard, the leader of the four strangers. His performance was nuanced, and his character was humane, and intimidating with a gentle sadness. The rest of the strangers played by Nikki Amuka-Bird, Rupert Grint and Abby Quinn also do a good job. Nikki and Abby illustrate the reluctance and desperation of their characters. Rupert delivers on being the scummy one compared to the others. Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge play the gay couple and I think they have good chemistry with one another. There wasn’t a moment where I think they didn’t care for one another. My genuine surprise was the daughter Wen, played by Kristen Cui. Kid actors tend to be quite bad but Kristen was very good and not remotely hateable. The movie also has nice cinematography and some good camera shots.

However, One major issue that damages this premise is the fact that the movie doesn’t do a good job of convincing us that the strangers could be lying. There aren’t enough convincing moments where there could be doubt about what they are saying. Due to this, the movie feels incredibly straightforward and predictable. It lacks the twist or turns that would make this film more exciting. I also found it difficult to care about the gay couple or the 4 strangers as there wasn’t much exploration of their backstories.

I also don’t understand why this movie has an R rating because there is a severe lack of gore or anything gruesome in it. Even when there are scenes that are meant to be gruesome, the camera cuts away from them. I usually judge a film by its own merit rather than compare it to the source material but I have to mention it in this scenario. This film is based on the book “The Cabin at the End of the World (2018)” by Paul Tremblay. A lot of the issues I have in this film are not a problem in the book. It is way more suspenseful, delves into the history of the characters, thought-provoking and actually has twists and turns! It just makes me wonder why Shyamalan didn’t just adapt the book faithfully? A lot of his changes in this film just make the story worst.

Overall, it is better than his previous film Old (2021) but not by much. M. Night Shyamalan is known for doing great twists but for some reason, this movie lacks any of that. The movie just feels very forgettable and that is kind of disappointing despite having such a great premise. It was great to see Dave Bautista in more serious roles and that is probably the only reason to see this. It’s a shame but this is another bad movie to add to his collection.