(from left) Adriane (Abby Quinn), Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Leonard (Dave Bautista) and Redmond (Rupert Grint) in Knock at the Cabin, directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
Courtney Howard // Film Critic
KNOCK AT THE CABIN
Rated R, 1 hour and 40 minutes
Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Rupert Grint, Abby Quinn, Kristen Cui
Director M. Night Shyamalan’s doomsday home-invasion thriller KNOCK AT THE CABIN doesn’t waste a second leading us to its pressurized cabin. The adaptation of Paul Tremblay’s bleak, highly acclaimed novel “The Cabin at the End of The World” starts in the same place, but takes clever, innovative detours on its cinematic journey. In this taut “what would you do” chamber piece, the auteur works steadily to unravel and subvert a grim trolley problem – a moral and ethical quandary that’s stumped philosophy scholars. Gnarly, psychologically gripping and thought-provoking, Shyamalan ramps up tension, artfully weaving sound and vision with great craft and care.
8-year-old Wen (Kristen Cui) is front of her parent’s remote vacation rental on the lake when she’s approached by Leonard (Dave Bautista), a stranger with a brawny build and massively kind disposition. As they chat about their shared interests, picking up hints at his backstory, it surfaces that he’s there with three other people, who emerge from the woods carrying medieval style weapons. Alarmed and scared, Wen darts back in the cabin to alert her two dads, Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and Eric (Jonathan Groff). They try to seek safe sanctuary inside, but to little avail. Leonard – along with Redmond (Rupert Grint), Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird) and Adriane (Abby Quinn) – reveals they’ve been chosen to save the world, only they need Andrew, Eric and Wen to make an excruciating decision or face the apocalypse.
Shyamalan’s use of staging and framing falls under the Hitchcockian philosophy of what the audience can’t see is more horrific than what’s blatantly shown. He uses these devices as a way to foreshadow divisions and demises. It’s key to the efficacy of his coaxed scares. While he could’ve toyed with us and the three hostages longer during their break-in sequence, booming, immersive sound design feels even more oppressive, disorienting and terrorizing than any horrific visual. Blood and gore are pushed to the frame’s tight edges, but add color and stench to the atmospheric dread. The camera’s placement, whether it’s static or utilizing canted angles to evoke an off-kilter world, is a showcase for Shyamalan’s keen visual dexterity.
Noemi Katharina Preiswerk’s editing, particularly when flashbacks are invoked, brings out the sharp emotional juxtaposition between the present and the past. Symbolism of invasive predators and prey is subtly threaded throughout the film’s fabric, from the glass jar of grasshoppers Wen’s collecting to the deer hoodie she sports. The first act is set to a soundscape of insects. Herdís Stefánsdóttir’s sinister score, which fills in much of the rest of the picture, is nail-biting. The beauty of Jarin Blaschke and Lowell A. Meyer’s cinematography feels almost ironic in the family’s time of horrific struggle.
The ensemble is solid, yet Shyamalan and his fellow adapting screenwriters Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman allow for individuals’ work to shine through sparingly. Playing the skeptical, pragmatic audience mouthpiece can be a difficult task, but Aldridge pulls it off magnificently with confidence and clarity. Depicting our split psyche’s internal push-pull, Aldridge’s character represents the quick-thinking head while Groff’s character is the heart, approaching the impossible conundrum with a tender touch. Cui turns in assured work at her young age. Grint is wonderfully wily as an unhinged intruder. Amuka-Bird humanizes her troubled trespasser, giving her a lush internal life. Quinn’s hysterical last-minute plea haunts us long after the film ends, delivered with the right amount of stress and sorrow.
Still, it’s Bautista who turns in the picture’s MVP performance, drawing upon an authentic sense of vulnerability, poignancy and deep-rooted anxieties. These dire situations feel intimate and immediate in his tattooed, capable hands. He conjures tears and terrors in equal amounts. At one point, his character begs his captives not to look away in order to be convinced of these interlopers’ devastating visions. Yet it’s we who dare not break our attention when he’s onscreen.
While the film tends to be thinner than the book in a few areas (mostly because it doesn’t have the luxury of time that a novel does), it’s surprisingly delicately textured when it comes to character motivations and the climax. Themes involving faith, belief, fatalism and perseverance (especially in terms of its depiction of queer love and family) taken from the source material resound louder with the filmmakers’ changes, leaving a different kind of lasting sting. Both the novel and film can coexist. It’s just a matter of choosing which one suits your worldview.
Grade: A-
KNOCK AT THE CABIN opens in theaters on February 3.
