KNOCK AT THE CABIN: A Return To Faith

Is it tiresome to run through the M. Night Shyamalan spiel again? We all know it at this point. He had a rapturous hold on us with The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable before waving and eventually plummeting somewhere between Signs and The Happening. And yet we still return to his movies again and again, with hope for those tantalizing high points driving us to take the plunge as his quality dips and sways.

Shyamalan is one of the few filmmakers whose name sells a movie, and as I just covered, that’s not because of his quality. For better or worse he has a brand, a trademark combo of all-ages chills and shocking twists that’s easy to sell to a wide audience. We all lost our minds over the perfect blend in The Sixth Sense, and we seem to have a collective desire to do it again.

That makes any deviation from the formula eyebrow raising, and Knock at the Cabin deviates just enough to risk losing those with too firm an idea of what a Shyamalan movie is. It’s more violent and much less scary than his usual fare, but at its core is his most solid grasp on his sturdiest theme in years: a fraught but ultimately hopeful question of faith.

Loose Genre

This exploration of faith is wrapped in his usual horror/thriller schtick. It begins with a meeting at a lonely cabin. Inside is a family who’s scrapped for their happiness, a pair of fathers and their adopted daughter, settling into a nice vacation. Outside is a menacing group of strangers purporting to have been sent to the cabin by strange visions, their task one none of them wants to do. The two group’s separation is quickly ended and the family is taken captive, with the rest of the film dragging itself towards a conclusion that feels inescapably brutal.

The briskness with which we get to the meat of the film is something Shyamalan, who co-wrote and directed Knock at the Cabin, rarely struggles with, but instead of that briskness coming from choppy exposition (remember the kid asking people’s jobs in Old?), here it comes from a hair-raising opening scene. Dave Bautista’s Leonard moseys up to the girl, Wen (Kristen Cui), and the two have a textbook stranger danger exchange. Cui, as she does throughout the film, holds up well against the tricky material. Bautista, though, is the one who makes the scene (and the entire film) feel like it’s walking on eggshells. He’s menacing, yes, but there’s a gentleness he can’t shake, even as he performs his horrible deeds. Whatever’s roiling beneath his surface eventually scares Wen away, but when her fathers see it, even as Leonard holds them hostage and asks them to do the unthinkable, his conflict softens them.

This is a big reason why Knock at the Cabin isn’t an incredibly suspenseful thriller. We know Shyamalan can put together a sequence that makes you squirm in your seat. He’s got nothing to prove there. Instead, he brings us a slow burn, one you can feel moldering away in Bautista’s gut, captivating instead of truly thrilling.

And that’s okay. This genre comes in all shapes and sizes, and Shyamalan is simply flexing different muscles. The scenario he sets up is still horrifying, and the questions he dangles still leave his characters with rending decisions. There are few bangs but there’s never a whimper, as the tension carries you steadily through an Old Testament-style parable.

Gotta Have Faith

Ultimately, though, the churn in Bautista is simply the instigator for the journey Knock at the Cabin takes you on. Much like Shyamalan’s previous (and divisive) film Signs, all the genre trappings can’t hide what is fundamentally the story of a man wrestling with his faith.

It’s one of the dads, of course, the more aggrieved and troubled Andrew (Ben Aldridge). He’s experienced more hate and rejection for his sexuality than his easygoing husband, Eric (Jonathan Groff). “You have a temper,” Eric remarks in one of the flashbacks that fill out their relationship. “It’s not scary, but it’s there.” It comes out in full force as Leonard and the rest of his group give them an outrageous ultimatum: the family sacrificially kills one of their own or the rest of humanity perishes. Impossible, rages Andrew. And besides, he’d readily give up the rest of the world for his husband and daughter because he’s fundamentally lost his faith in humanity.

This is how Knock at the Cabin deviates from Signs, and as someone who thinks Shyamalan’s tale of a wayward priest rivals even The Sixth Sense, where Knock falls a little short of that greatness. Signs stays within the more focused definition of faith as a function of religion. Knock expands it out to its broader applications, toying not just with religious concepts but with the necessity to believe in your own reality, your own values, and the presence of some fundamental decency that makes humanity worth fighting for.

It’s a mess of ideas for Andrew to navigate while being held hostage in a cabin, and one the film doesn’t entirely give the breadth of examination it deserves. Aldridge manages to smooth out the journey with a lot of help from Groff, who provides a gentle balance to Aldridge’s torment. The rest of the cast represent their complications on the idea admirably, and if it surprises you that most of the characters are ciphers for concepts instead of full human beings, maybe you haven’t seen a Shyamalan film before?

The summation, though, is an affecting tale that makes good use of its fraught questions. It never lingers too long, on any one of them (and perhaps would’ve been better off with a more narrow focus), but the uneasy mood that settles over the long standoff between the faithful and the faithless allows it to wring plenty of pathos from the struggle.

Conclusion: Knock at the Cabin

Shyamalan finds new ways to explore old ideas, deviating slightly from his usual formula while still making you frightfully uneasy.

Knock at the Cabin is in theaters in the US and the UK beginning February 3rd. For more international release dates, click here.

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