The Doctor’s Diagnosis: D
For better or worse, M. Night Shyamalan’s filmography is largely comprised of movies that would conceptually sound amazing as two-sentence summaries of proposed Twilight Zone episodes. He is a master of coming of with “what if?” scenarios and twist endings. Unfortunately, extending those concepts to feature-length movies has often been a rocky road. My favorite Shyamalan film is The Visit, but his attempts to stretch a concept into a movie can often result in drawn-out boredom (as with Lady in the Water) or unintentional campiness (as with Old). Given those options, I will take campiness anytime. Unfortunately, Knock at the Cabin falls into the boring category as the script is unable to extend an intriguing core concept into an entertaining 100 minutes of screentime.
Knock at the Cabin begins with a gay couple, Eric and Andrew, and their adopted daughter, Wen, going on vacation at a secluded cabin in the woods of Pennsylvania. They are approached by four strangers that break into the cabin, tie them up and explain that they are there to prevent the apocalypse. The intruders claim that the family has been selected to decide the fate of humanity and that one of them must sacrifice themselves in order to prevent the impending end of the world. As the family refuses to choose one of themselves to sacrifice, the television shows natural disasters occurring all over the world and things continue to get worse as time passes without a sacrifice.
The concept sounds intriguing, as they usually do for Shyamalan’s films, and could work quite well as a 30-minute episode of a television show. However, it can’t sustain 100 minutes because, aside from the final resolution, the concept itself precludes any suspense. The villains (if they are villains) can’t kill the heroes because, according to the doomsday prophecy, the heroes must choose one of themselves to sacrifice. The decision to make a sacrifice can’t be made until the last act or else there wouldn’t be a movie. The film is, therefore, forced to kill time between the introduction of the setup and the final resolution. That leaves about an hour that essentially amounts to stalling in order to allow the movie to hit an acceptable feature length. Shyamalan tries to spice this up with the notion that one of the villains must periodically commit suicide as the protagonists continue to refuse to make a sacrifice. Why do they do this? What does it accomplish? I have no idea and it doesn’t seem like the filmmakers quite have figured it out either.
There is also a flimsy attempt to give the film a biblical element by connecting the four intruders with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. These horsemen are, I assume, meant as an inversion of their traditional biblical interpretation in that they are attempting to prevent the end of the world. This is the one attempt the film makes at justifying their periodic suicides, as their deaths are harbingers of the arrival of new disasters throughout the world. However, this begs an obvious question: If they are attempting to prevent the apocalypse, then why would they actively perform the sacrifices needed to bring about the apocalypse? Their roles and motivations are never quite cleared up, as the biblical parallel is in direct contrast (both symbolically and logically) with their actions.
Shyamalan also seems to be working out some personal issues here. Although this isn’t surprising in 2023, the film’s concept is run through a filter of identity politics and, by the end, borders on what I like to call “oppression porn.” It is repeatedly stated that the gay couple and the adopted daughter are chosen to make the sacrifice on humanity’s behalf because their love is the most pure love in the world. Subtlety be damned, that kind of eye-rolling identity politics and virtue signaling epitomize 2023 as much as hair spray and Van Halen epitomize 1984. As the film continues, it becomes clear that this pure love must be sacrificed in order to avoid god’s wraith, giving the film a homosexuality vs. church narrative. Given the film’s Twilight Zone-like hook, was any of this necessary? No. But its 2023, so why bother making a movie if it doesn’t include something about oppression? Just for entertainment value, you say? That’s ridiculous, back to the 80s with you.
The one positive is that every single performance is stellar, which is astounding considering the script’s inability to establish consistent and rational motivations. The four villains are particularly strong, as there is an element of reluctance in every moment and movement of their performances. Even at their most threatening, one is inclined to sympathize with them because they so clearly don’t want to be doing what they are doing (which I could also say about the actors themselves when they realized that the script was a final draft). Dave Bautista is a standout even among the standouts, showing that he has real dramatic acting ability and could perform material that isn’t a generic action or Marvel movie. He is both terrifying and genuinely sad, giving a performance that may singularly give him the title of best wrestler-turned-actor (not a high bar, sure, but I still think Roddy Piper was underrated in this regard).
Here is a movie confession: I’m not a big fan of The Sixth Sense. I know, I’m the only one. But I always felt like it was a lot of filler needed to get to a great twist and, therefore, would have worked better as an episode of Twilight Zone or Outer Limits. The same can be said for Knock at the Cabin, except that it has a less coherent script, less compelling characters and the burden of being dragged through the lens of identity politics. You can just watch the first 15 minutes and the last 10 minutes and skip the middle without missing much. You are still wasting 25 minutes, though.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knock_at_the_Cabin#/media/File:Knock_at_the_cabin.jpg
