Courtesy Blinding Edge Pictures
Oh, M. Night Shyamalan, you’ve done it again! You’ve taken a mega-intriguing premise and let it fizzle out with an ending that can’t possibly live up to the elements you put in place along the way. You did it with Old when the payoff was that one beach just plain made people old somehow; you did with it with Mr. Glass when Bruce Willis’ nouveau-superhero just kind of died; and now you’ve done it with Knock at the Cabin, wherein the ending just kind of rolls up on the viewer leaving us to be like, “Huh...”
Based on the Paul G. Tremblay novel, The Cabin at the End of the World, Shyamalan’s newest finds a couple of dads (Spring Awakening/Hamilton originator Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge, Pennyworth) on vacation in some Pennsylvania cabin. They become the victims of a quartet of home invaders led by hulking teacher/b-ball coach Leonard (Dave Bautista, Guardians of the Galaxy). With the dads is their 7-year-old daughter, Wen (Kristen Cui), which kind of makes things more tense, even if her presence feels like a plot device rather than a meaningful addition; Leonard leads a forgettable cadre of over-actors, save Harry Potter alum Rupert Grint, who at least tries to summon some intensity.
Seems Leonard and his gang have been experiencing convincing visions about the end of the world, and those visions have led them to this very cabin where they’ll need to ask the unwitting inhabitants to make the worst decision ever. If their captives don’t do the unthinkable, Leonard and the gang believe, it’ll usher in the end of the world, courtesy of God himself. Creepy stuff happens as our leads teeter between disbelief and belief, and we’re meant to question how we’d behave if we, too, became participants in the worst camping trip ever.
As with most of his work, Shyamalan’s cinematography is stunning and inventive. Still, he once again establishes narrative threads that just kind of go nowhere. While Groff and Aldridge do their best with clunky dialogue and fleeting flashback vignettes—not to mention the vaguest hint of ill-considered “queer-bashing is wrong!” rhetoric. Yes, it is, but once again we’re trapped in a trauma loop and it feels more manipulative than vital to the story. Bautista, meanwhile, proves he’s come into his own as a performer. The dichotomy of Leonard’s imposing presence and soft-spoken portends of terror is as unsettling as it gets, but anytime he’s not on screen one winds up longing for his return.
And then it ends, not with a bang but a whimper. Those who’ve seen movies before will no doubt predict what’s coming, even through some intensely enjoyable plot beats. If the moral is that belief and faith are something-something, then cool. It’s just the whole getting there part that feels tedious.
5
+Unsettling premise; Bautista
-Unsatisfying payoff; narrative dead ends
Knock at the Cabin
Directed by Shyamalan
With Bautista, Groff, Aldridge and Cui
Violet Crown, Regal, R, 100 min.
