Left to right: Abby Quinn, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Dave Bautista, Rupert Grint
In his new film, Knock at the Cabin, director M. Night Shyamalan continues to solidify his legacy as a modern American thrillmaster, while still keeping his controversial charm. The film, based on the book Cabin at the End of the World by Paul G. Tremblay, follows a gay family on vacation at a lakeside cabin in the forests of Pennsylvania. Their getaway is interrupted when a group of strangers break into their cabin and claim to be attempting to prevent Armageddon.
The film stars Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge as the couple, with their young adopted daughter played by Kristen Cui. The group of strangers consists of Dave Bautista, who many will know as either Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy or as a former pro-wrestler for WWE, Rupert Grint, commonly known as Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter film series, and Nikki Amuka-Bird, who was in Shyamalan’s previous film Old. Abby Quinn is also in the movie and finally gets her time to shine in a more important role than she has had in previous films, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women being the most notable.
While all the actors are good in their own right, Bautista really shines through. His immense presence cannot be understated and the audience’s eyes are drawn to him immediately when he is in a scene. Rupert Grint also makes terrific use of the little time he is given in the film.
The group claims to be preventing the apocalypse, and that one member of the family staying at this cabin must martyr themselves to save humanity. Aldridge’s character, Andrew, immediately assumes what we all would: these are lunatic people who met each other on fringe internet message boards and are attacking them out of a hateful religious fervor. It is only Groff’s character, Andrew’s husband Eric, that seems to have compassion for these people. Eric is a Christlike figure in the movie. He has a crown of thorns replaced by a ring of gauze, and throughout the movie, we see situations where his kindness shines through.
Like Shyamalan’s other works, the film is better the less you know going in, which makes it difficult to review. However, it is this reporter’s opinion that the film not only contains a great showcase of acting and camerawork, which is almost a lost art in modern American film, but it also gives an important lesson: we should have compassion for those that want the worst from us. In Knock at the Cabin, Shyamalan reaffirms the idea that humans were made to tell stories so we could empathize with those we theoretically could not. Is any of it practical in the real world? Who knows. But, it makes a damn good movie.
