As a devoted M. Night Shyamalan fan, I now experience the disadvantages of watching him. Because when you watch an M. Night Shyamalan movie, you feel that the film belongs to him right up to your cells. As a matter of fact, when watching a Shyamalan movie, you can predict that there will be a twist at the end without exception and that it will definitely have some fantastic tendencies. As someone who has never read the book the movie is based on, I let the story fool me as much as I could, but unfortunately, because I watched an M. Night Shyamalan movie, I was able to predict what might happen in the end, and as a result, I managed to lower my own viewing pleasure.
In short, let’s talk about it… Eric, Andrew, and their daughter Wen come across Leonard and their friends while planning a peaceful and quiet holiday in the middle of the forest. A lovely vacation with wine and a hot tub becomes a nightmare when Leonard and his friends take them, prisoner. But things get even crazier here. Although Eric and Andrew are held hostage, we realize -somehow- they are the actual hostage takers. Because Leonard and his crazy friends, who came to that Cabin to save the world, start to kill themself one by one, and it’s up to Eric and Andrew to save the world.
I haven’t read Paul Tremblay’s book. But I am aware of the points where the movie and the book diverge. However, I cannot say that these diverging parts bother me. Knock at the Cabin actually has no trouble advancing the story. It keeps the tension alive from beginning to end. Up to a point, it manages to leave us in a dilemma: Are Leonard and his team insane, or is the world really on the brink of extinction? Although everything worked well until the first prophecy, after the second prophecy, you remember that the movie was an M. Night Shyamalan movie, and you can guess who was right, no matter how illogical it may seem.
Knock at the Cabin is especially thriving with its acting. I have already said above that the film, in which everyone did an excellent job, had no problem setting up the story. The main problem with the movie is that while it shows the disasters that should be impressive, it is not believable. I was a bit surprised that the film’s visual effects, which had a higher budget than Shyamalan’s previous film, Old, looked so scurrile. Although I find the idea of disaster transmission over the news channel successful, they are unsuccessful in conveying it. The disasters we saw in the news should have been more goosebumps than the tension of a few people in the Cabin, right?
Another problem with the movie is Eric’s attitude toward the people who took them, hostage. I find it reasonable that he claims they were taken hostage because they are gay. It is perfectly logical that his sexual identity comes first to his mind because of his subconscious fears. But the fact that Eric still and persistently insists on fixed thinking, despite Leonard and his team’s stubbornly telling their cause, undermines realism. The fact that the visit was unrelated to their being gay and that one of the prophecies had come true, and yet Eric still continued the same obsession, made me think of this as a compelling motivation.
To sum it up… Knock at the Cabin is a mid-range movie under the leadership of Bautista that keeps the tension in The Cabin to the fullest but loses its credibility when it comes to high CGI disasters on television. The movie’s biggest plus is that I didn’t get bored while watching it. Not only the visual and compelling motivation did not slow down the tempo. Likewise, knowing that I was watching a Shyamalan movie assured me that the twist at the end would turn into the fantastic side. Still, the fact that it was a Shyamalan movie, the tension in the narrow hut, and the camera show he put on made me enjoy eating my corn.
Cast & Crew
director: M. Night Shyamalan
writers: Paul Tremblay, M. Night Shyamalan, Steve Desmond
starring: Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Rupert Grint, Abby Quinn, Kristen Cui
USA | 2023 | 100 MINUTES |