Knock at the Cabin (2023)
Review of Knock at the Cabin (2023), directed by M. Night Shymalan
Although I had a subscription to AMC A List and technically only paid the flat fee of $24 for one month, having the equivalent of twelve movies a month, I was absolutely shocked when I booked my ticket for this movie and saw that the Dolby movies were now costing $25 to see on a weekend night.
When I sat down in my usual seat for these big movie theater movies, I found it absolutely hilarious that I was sitting next to a first date that was going poorly. I was enjoying myself listening to how bad their conversation was and how the girl was not here for the date at all. Still they stayed though, so kudos to them.
Anyways, I would have been annoyed if I actually paid money to see Knock at the Cabin. Granted, I was convinced enough to see if the novel was available in my local library (it was), and I ended up hating the novel too.
I will not be writing a review of that, though it was interesting to compare this to the film version. There are major differences M. Night Shymalan made with this script that completely diverts from the original plot points of the novel, and I was very interested in the process behind making said decisions.
Onwards with the review!
A vacationing couple with their daughter gets a nasty surprise when four strangers show up at their door.
A New York City couple, Andrew and Eric, brings their adopted daughter from China, Wen, to the mountains of Pennsylvania for a vacation.
Things are going pretty well, there’s a lot of laughter and jumping into the lake, but when Wen is outside catching grasshoppers one day, a large man named Leonard (Bautista) appears out of the woods and starts talking to Wen. At first he is asking basic questions about her, but then starts to delve into weird territory when he apologizes and says bad things are going to happen to Wen and her fathers.
Scared, Wen runs inside and warns her fathers about Leonard, especially as three of his other buddies begin to appear out of the woods and approach their cabin. Her fathers lock the doors and barricade what they can, but this proves futile when the four strangers (clearly a metaphor for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, they’re even wearing symbolic colors for these things), find their way in.
After a brief scuffle, leaving Eric with a concussion, the two fathers are tied up and the strangers explain their reason for coming.
They swear they do not want to inflict violence, although Redmond is very aggressive in his approach, and tell who they are. Leonard is an elementary school teacher, Sabrina is a nurse, Adriane is a chef from Washington D.C., and then there’s Redmond. They say they met on an online forum because they had the same exact visions of the world ending, and these visions told them what they need to do. The family needs to sacrifice one of their members before a certain time, or the world is going to start to end.
Naturally, the family thinks that these people are crazy, especially Andrew. When they say no, the strangers reveal they have to sacrifice one of themselves every time they say no, and then Redmond is killed brutally in front of the family.
Leonard goes to turn on the television, and, after some delay, megatsunamis begin to wipe off the coast of Washington, killing a lot of people. This is only the beginning, but Andrew denies that any of this is real, and realizes that Redmond is someone who attacked him in a bar years ago because of how he was gay.
Their awkward dance continues. The film version does a good job of fleshing out the strangers, showing how they’re real people. I don’t think we get that sense in the book as much, which is kind of sad compared to the film version. Wen tries to escape at one point, but is caught by Leonard in the woods.
When the family says no the next morning, Adriane, despite begging that she has a son, is sacrificed in the name of the apocalypse and a plague is released among children. Around this point, Andrew confirms Redmond is the guy who attacked him, and busts out to get to his gun in the car.
He ends up shooting Sabrina in the house, and Leonard decapitates her before it’s too late. He manages to trip Andrew and Eric, but ends up telling them on the porch they need to make a decision soon.
Planes begin falling out of the sky at this point, and Leonard sacrifices himself. Eric reveals that while concussed, he randomly had as vision like the strangers, and begs Andrew to sacrifice him. He is shot, and Andrew finds Wen, as the world begins to restore to its natural order.
While leaving, Wen and Andrew find the bags the strangers brought with them, confirming that their stories were true. They were who they said they were. Thus ends a movie that I ended up considering walking out of, especially as the twists were obvious and the story itself was just not good.
A couple of people did end up walking out of my screening, which was understandable. A lot of the problems I think stemmed from the fact it’s just repetitive. The rhythm never changes, making how this will go predictable and not great when the things you expected happen actually happen. I lost steam around twenty minutes after the first sacrifice.
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