Say what you will — actually, scratch that, please don’t say what you will, because based on the evidence laid before us there’s a good chance someone out there is still adding a “la-la-ding-dong” to the man’s name — about M. Night Shyamalan, but I don’t think his most iconic motif is really what strings his filmography together. Shouting about “twists” in this day and age is like toting a Nokia N-Gage or driving a Chevy SSR and expecting that somebody might find it exciting or novel in any sense other than you’re a neo-retro aesthete with more cash than sense. But the thing is that these folks are still out there, even though Shyamalan is just a part of a long and proud tradition of genre filmmakers who understand what it means to make a climax compelling and, importantly, how to build suspense to make it hum like a freshly-tuned engine. Take, for example, Knock at the Cabin, his latest and perhaps best since the golden era: It is based on Paul Tremblay’s novel The Cabin at the End of the World, with a plot straight out of a Twilight Zone episode. It’s not an original Shyamalan concept, and the “twist” is baked into the plot (albeit in an altered form from the source material, which is a choice that will make more sense later on in this review), so one can’t dismiss it with a catty “This is what he does when he’s out of ideas” criticism.
One also can’t dismiss his immense skill at crafting a sense of dread through framing and pacing. Take, for example, the film’s opening. While catching grasshoppers in the wood outside her family’s vacation rental, a young girl named Wen (Kristen Cui) notices a stranger slowly wandering toward her. The man seems to be a gentle giant. Despite his tattooed arms and bulky build, Leonard (Dave Bautista) seems ill-suited to his large form, sporting an accountant’s business-casual wear and a calm (albeit slightly nervous) demeanor. Through games and a few other ways of establishing trust, he expertly charms the child into revealing details about her family. Specifically, that her dads, Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge), are relaxing inside, though most of the things she tells him won’t matter much in the grand scheme already underway. Shyamalan keeps us on edge through his composition, with ratcheting close-ups and a winnowing focus, the background blurrier as we get closer to Leonard’s face. When his three friends emerge from the wood, carrying hand-crafted weapons (that aren’t intended for the family but will serve a ceremonial purpose), Wen finally realizes her mistake and runs into the cabin, telling her parents about the strangers heading towards them. An awkward negotiation and, eventually, a poorly executed-yet-successful home invasion follow. Once all parties are secured, the foursome goes about cleaning up their mess and tending to Eric’s concussion, sustained during a fall in the middle of a fistfight. The invaders are behaving very oddly for a group of home invaders – they do not want to be there and are incredibly uncomfortable with what they’re going to do over the next hours.
At that point, Leonard reveals to the family why they’re tormenting them: the four have been sent apocalyptic visions of various cataclysms, all of which can be prevented provided that the family, over the course of the next day, chooses one member to sacrifice for the sins of humanity. They sound like the crazed rantings of your typical end-of-times cult once they’ve moved into the Flavor-Aid phase. Still, the four – previously normal people, once upon a time – aren’t a part of a larger group. However, Andrew, given his genuine skepticism of the rest of humanity, assumes they’ve been specifically targeted. There’s decent evidence for this, as he seems to recognize one of the group, a scruffy bastard named Redmond (Rupert Grint, doing his best with the Boston accent), as a man who assaulted him in a bar years and years ago. But there’s also decent evidence that they might, in fact, be who they say they are, and, even worse, that they might be right. Strange coincidences occur once the four get down to business: For each refusal from the family, one of the four is killed by the others, and minutes later, some catastrophe befalls humanity. An earthquake, a discovery of a new strain of bird flu and so on: all are a collection attempt on humanity’s sinful debt, the likes of which are downright Old Testament-style biblical in their devastation. So, the family has an impossible choice to make – do they fight back against their captors, escape, and doom all of humanity, aside from themselves (they’ll wander the devastated landscape, permanently alone), or do they accept the impossible and make a horrific sacrifice on very little evidence while also sparing the lives of so many who hate their very existence? Andrew is committed to the former, but Eric has his own doubts, all while the clock ticks down.
Again, much of the film is expertly directed, and it’s brilliantly cast as well. Shyamalan has a talent for finding a certain kind of hyper-earnest actor for his works – the man could even make Bruce Willis into a genuine four-color comic book hero – and his selections here are perfect. Bautista is always good, but he’s fantastic as Leonard, channeling his character’s distinct pains and emotions into his frame, with every stammer or sweat bead informing just how fucking uncomfortable he is to be in this position, though a fierce commitment remains behind his eyes. He’s a true believer, and so are the rest of the invaders. Groff and Aldridge do swell work in their contrasting styles – the former’s the stable family supervisor, calm in every situation, while the latter is fierce and uncompromising in his attempts to defend his family, though he’s occasionally reckless and nihilistic in his drive to do so. And once again, we’re reminded of Shyamalan’s Spielberg-like skill at directing children, as Cui delivers a fantastic performance, assisted by the smart screenplay, that embodies all the good characteristics of a particular type of curious and witty on-screen child, while managing to retain enough realism for us to think of her as a character and not a bundle of screen-stereotypes that Hollywood folks have about children. For most of the runtime, Knock at the Cabin will thrill and captivate the viewers, but the revelations at the film’s climax will, undoubtedly, cause some to blanche for understandable reasons.
Those who have read the novel understand that Trembeley’s story is bleak enough to compete with Frank Darabount’s interpretation of King’s The Mist. Though its conclusion is metal as fuck in its defiance, that’s not Shyamalan’s modus operandi as a storyteller. See, above all else, even more than the “Twist,” he’s one of the few horror-adjacent filmmakers with a genuine sentimentalist streak. His best films – list any of your favorites of his oeuvre here – are all united by a single theme: community and connection are the essential ingredients to a good life, especially in the face of the overwhelming darkness that threatens to envelop us. This is why I think The Village was such a rupture for his audience, given that it was a film whose climax hinged on the revelation that the tranquility of that colony rested on lies – it was a twist in service of a different end than, say, Signs or even The Sixth Sense, which is Shyamalan’s tragic inversion of his worldview. All of his worst work can be attributed to that loss of sentiment, with his gun-for-hire work on The Last Airbender being the kind of disaster that results when one abandons their principles to staunch their career’s bleeding.
He can stray too far into sentimentalism, with the often-attributed egotistical elements in Lady in the Water‘s failure mattering less than the saccharine tone, but, importantly, it is still recognizable as a Shyamalan film even if it is in an altogether different genre than much of his work. And that, ultimately, makes him such a divisive filmmaker: Either you can accept the fact that he is who he is and appreciate (or stomach) his worldview, or it is anathema to you. I don’t hate his perspective, and I think his skills make those emotional notes land – see the usage of “Boogie Shoes” in Knock at the Cabin and its final shot – but I can understand finding that perspective trite and treacly. Yet people should recognize that Shyamalan is an excellent craftsman, and I’d encourage those on the fence to give Knock at the Cabin a chance. Who knows: Your choice could save the world.