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M. Night Shyamalan should probably just stay away from the apocalypse. Who could forget the baffling events of his global warming horror “The Happening,” aptly represented by a scene in which a character just lays down in front of a moving lawn mower? Or what about “ After Earth ,” which made a box office bomb out of a sci-fi movie starring Will Smith and his son Jaden Smith ? There’s something about the end of the world that fascinates Shyamalan—as a sentimental moralist, an overzealous twister, and a button-pusher—there’s also something that always foils him. His latest, “Knock at the Cabin,” uses the question of human behavior during the threat of end times to create a morality study that progressively hollows itself out. It’s another minor work from a director whose films, especially after “After Earth,” have been mostly major.

It’s a shame that the story isn’t so good, because the film has a rich and earthy Kodak-shot presentation from co-cinematographers Jarin Blaschke (“ The Lighthouse ”) and Lowell A. Meyer (“ Thunder Road ”), who turn many scenes of characters standing in mostly the same living room into striking studies of pleading faces in close-up. It looks about as realized as a movie like this could be. And the performances have enough uniform intensity, even when the writing is only playing games. It’s a striking ensemble piece by design, and creates some promise early on, but Shyamalan’s larger intent doesn’t give “Knock at the Cabin” nearly enough resonance.

The standout performance comes from Dave Bautista , in his most tatted-up teddy bear mode possible, wearing glasses like he did in “ Blade Runner 2049 ” to suggest the gentle boy inside his grizzly physique. For a movie about how humans choose to interact with one another, his acting is incredibly disarming here and sometimes moving in how he chooses to speak so gently while enacting a plan filled with the unthinkable. His character Leonard is a second-grade teacher from Chicago who has united with three other people (played by Rupert Grint , Abby Quinn , and Nikki Amuka-Bird ) who have also had life-changing visions of the apocalypse. They approach a cabin in the woods with sharp weapons in hand, and they do not want to hurt the people inside. But they will enact the violence that they feel they must.

The targeted family is that of young Wen ( Kristen Cui ) and her two dads, Eric ( Jonathan Groff ) and Andrew ( Ben Aldridge ). They do not know why they have been chosen, but it does not matter. Tied up in chairs before their weapon-wielding captors, they must decide to kill one of their family of three to stop an impending apocalypse. They cannot kill themselves, and if they reject their captors’ prospect, something awful will happen in the cabin, and a plague will be unleashed. The first time Eric and Andrew effusively say no, towering tsunamis are conjured, and deadly earthquakes ensue.

Are Leonard and his friends onto something, or is this all a coincidence? Is it manipulation? There may be no force more powerful on this earth than belief. It can be a tool that builds communities or a weapon that destroys lives; a movie like “Knock at the Cabin” needs to wriggle in that magnanimous uncertainty of belief, and instead, it only sits and admires it. It’s like presenting QAnon devotees and people who think the Earth is flat as possibly being right, for the sake of both sides-ism. Shyamalan isn't nudging about a divided people (like Jordan Peele's “ Us ,” which echoes through the woods of this movie), but lazily stirring the fear of conspiracy.

Cut back to us, well aware that our collective brains are broken, waiting for a larger point: we are stuck with a frustrating and self-serious movie that kneels before its zealousness but also continually emphasizes why Leonard and the others would sow skepticism. The script carefully doles out information about everyone to toy with coincidence and happenstance, but it's more stirring, less building. Shyamalan does not have the nuance to handle this idea, as confirmed when his expected twist comes minutes before the end.

Even with these sharp weapons, bizarre motivations, and that whole apocalypse thing, “Knock at the Cabin” lacks a key squeamish element. Not that the movie needs gore, but the threat of violence in this immediate scenario is specifically numbed by cutaways; for a story pitched in the human capacity to recognize another’s life value, there just isn’t the terror that could create some of its emotional stakes. The lack of it is deeply felt once it becomes apparent what monsters this movie is and isn’t dealing with, while showing how these people are driven by something that forces them to do awful things. Instead, “Knock at the Cabin” creates one anticlimax after another.

The script, co-written by Shyamalan, Steve Desmond , and Michael Sherman (adapting Paul Tremblay's book The Cabin at the End of the World ), does better in making us worry for the targeted family. During this present-day stress, "Knock at the Cabin" cuts back and forth between the love story of Eric and Andrew, and their life with adopted daughter Wen. Groff and Aldridge are heartbreaking as they slowly become opposites: Aldridge embodies one’s tough exterior against a threatening world, while Groff gradually depicts the journey of seeing the light. Together, they show the pain of possibly making The Choice, and how Eric and Andrew don’t want to in part because of their deep love for each other. They also help provide more substance to the film’s representation of a same-sex married couple, which on one hand, more of this please, but on the other hand, still feels like major studio productions have a lot more work to do.

“Knock at the Cabin” has glimmers of interest as a parable about people trying to preserve all of humanity: not just the population, but the concept. The work of Leonard and co. is something like a promotion of empathy, though as is often said about faith: it's the messengers who need work. By trying to make a grand statement to a post-lockdown theatergoing audience about what they are willing to believe—but also about how far they are willing to go for others—Shyamalan trips over himself and neglects to give them much of a movie.

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Nick Allen is the former Senior Editor at RogerEbert.com and a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Knock at the Cabin (2023)

Rated R for violence and language.

100 minutes

Jonathan Groff as Eric

Ben Aldridge as Andrew

Kristen Cui as Wen

Dave Bautista as Leonard

Rupert Grint as Redmond

Nikki Amuka-Bird as Sabrina

Abby Quinn as Adriane

M. Night Shyamalan

Writer (based on the book "The Cabin at the End of the World" by)

Paul Tremblay
Steve Desmond
Michael Sherman

Cinematographer

Jarin Blaschke
Lowell A. Meyer
Noemi Preiswerk
Herdís Stefánsdóttir

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‘Knock at the Cabin’ Review: Who’s There? The Apocalypse.

In M. Night Shyamalan’s latest thought experiment, Dave Bautista brings the end of the world to a peaceful country cottage.

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In a scene from the film, a muscular man with tattooed arms stands with two other people in a room in a wood cabin.

By A.O. Scott

A little girl, out collecting grasshoppers in the forest, meets someone who might be described — if this were a picture book — as a friendly giant. His huge arms are covered in tattoos, and his demeanor walks a fine line between gentle and fearsome.

His name is Leonard, and his new acquaintance, just about to turn 8, is called Wen. Since this is a movie by M. Night Shyamalan — and a pretty good one, all things considered — a sinister vibe creeps in around the edges of their first encounter. The colors are uncannily bright, the close-up shots unnervingly angled (Jarin Blaschke and Lowell A. Meyer are responsible for the 35-millimeter cinematography). The music (by Herdis Stefansdottir) hums with menace. Something scary is about to happen.

What happens is a version of what former philosophy students and debate-happy internet smarties will recognize as the Trolley Problem , a chestnut of hypothetical ethical disputation. Would you, the classic version goes, run over one person with a trolley if doing so meant you could save five people on the other track? The variation that Leonard (Dave Bautista) proposes to Wen (Kristen Cui) and her family is at once grander and more intimate. Would you sacrifice yourself or someone you loved to prevent a global apocalypse?

Think fast! But don’t, maybe, think too hard about the premise and the narrative scaffolding of this itchy, claustrophobic, metaphysical thriller, which Shyamalan adapted (with Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman) from a novel by Paul Tremblay . Leonard is accompanied by three other believers in his end-times scenario: Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Adriane (Abby Quinn) and Redmond (Rupert Grint). Strangers until very recently, they received identical visions of flood, plague and darkness. They believe this cascade of catastrophes will come to pass unless Wen or one of her dads, Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge), volunteers to die.

Why them? Is it because Eric and Andrew are a gay couple, or because they happen to have rented an unlucky vacation property? Surely not the first thing: Sabrina insists on behalf of the group that “we don’t have a homophobic bone in our bodies.” Even if that doesn’t turn out to be true (Redmond has some ugliness in his back story), the real estate seems like a more plausible explanation. The movie is called “Knock at the Cabin” (the book is called “The Cabin at the End of the World”), and the house, with its remote location, floor-to-ceiling bookcases, dark wood paneling and deep cellar, looks like a perfect place to host a horror movie.

Is “Knock at the Cabin” one of those? That’s another topic for debate. Shyamalan is sometimes classified as a horror auteur, but the genre label doesn’t always fit with his themes and methods. While this movie is suspenseful and (discreetly) bloody, it is more interested in thoughts and tender sentiments than in fright or shock.

The story isn’t coiled around a clever, rug-pulling twist — a sometimes tiresome , sometimes bracing Shyamalan signature — so much as balanced on a series of simple binaries. Either Leonard and his pals are telling the truth or they’re out of their minds. Andrew and Eric will believe them or not. The film’s effectiveness depends on what occurs on the way to the answers, and in this respect Shyamalan’s wit and sincerity serve him and the audience well.

Granting the preposterousness of the whole idea, he is genuinely nonetheless curious about what it would be like to have this kind of experience. Whether Leonard is the kindly schoolteacher and reluctant prophet he claims to be or the leader of a small and lethal doomsday cult, he tries to be sensitive to the predicament of his captives. The rules of the vision forbid him or his colleagues from performing the sacrifice themselves, so they engage Eric and Andrew in a lengthy, sometimes brutal seminar, with occasional news broadcasts to emphasize their argument.

A handful of flashbacks of Andrew and Eric’s life as a couple — including their adoption of Wen — makes them seem like more than panicked, generic victims, while also opening up the occasionally stagy action. Aldridge and Groff do what they can to overcome the blandness of the characters, but the movie really belongs to Bautista and Cui, who provide the danger, charm, wit and grit that it needs to be even remotely credible.

I wish it were more than that. There is a grandiosity here that’s hard to swallow, and a final swell of emotion that isn’t quite earned. For all its skill and cunning, “Knock at the Cabin” is an overwrought quasi-theological melodrama that also manages to be a half-baked thought experiment. It’s a thrill ride in a toy trolley.

Knock at the Cabin Rated R. You see dead people. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters.

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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Knock at the Cabin

While vacationing, a girl and her parents are taken hostage by armed strangers who demand that the family make a choice to avert the apocalypse. While vacationing, a girl and her parents are taken hostage by armed strangers who demand that the family make a choice to avert the apocalypse. While vacationing, a girl and her parents are taken hostage by armed strangers who demand that the family make a choice to avert the apocalypse.

M. Night Shyamalan
Paul Tremblay
Steve Desmond
Dave Bautista
Jonathan Groff
Ben Aldridge
814 User reviews
315 Critic reviews
63 Metascore
10 nominations

Andrew's Mom

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(as Bill Vargus)

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M. Night Shyamalan Puts on His "Boogie Shoes"

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Trivia In a 2023 interview with Screen Rant, M. Night Shyamalan explained how he came to cast Dave Bautista : "I thought, 'This is an impossible role. A GIANT who can emote and do 30 pages of monologues. This doesn't exist, this person doesn't exist!' And then I was like, 'Wait a minute, what about that guy in Blade Runner 2049 (2017) ?' I don't know much about wrestling, so it wasn't like I had that in my head, and probably if I did I might've been blinded to the fact that this person was an amazing actor... They said his name was Dave Bautista and so I reached out, and then Dave reached out, and then we met. And when I spoke to him, I found a human being who was ready to start over again, take away all the success that he had and unlearn it and then start over... He just wanted to be proud of himself and I was like, 'I'm down, brother. Let's do it the right way from beginning to end' and he's like, 'I don't know if I can do this' and I go, 'But I do'."
Goofs At 01:05:15, Sabrina strikes the SUV window and the window cracks. At 01:05:18, Sabrina strikes the SUV window for a second time (and it shatters), but the cracks from the first strike are missing.

Leonard : The four of us are here to prevent the apocalypse. We - and when I say, "we", I mean everyone in this cabin, can stop it from happening, but only with your help. Ultimately, whether the world ends or not is completely up to you three.

Andrew : You are having a psychological break of some kind.

Leonard : Your family must choose to willingly sacrifice one of the three of you in order to prevent the apocalypse. After you make what I know is an impossible decision, you must then kill the one you choose. If you fail to choose, of if you fail to follow through with the sacrifice, the world will end. You three will live, but the rest of humanity, seven billion plus... will perish.

Eric : They're lunatics.

Leonard : And you will all live long enough to witness the horror of the end of everything. And you will be left to wander the devastated planet alone. Permanently and cosmically... alone.

Andrew : Leonard. We haven't done anything wrong.

Leonard : I agree with you. You haven't. You haven't done anything wrong to... to deserve this burden. You're just the family chosen to decide for us in this time.

Crazy credits At the very end of the credits, you hear the knocking on the cabin door.
Connections Featured in The Graham Norton Show: Claire Foy/Sarah Michelle Gellar/M. Night Shyamalan/Rob Beckett/Sam Smith (2023)
Soundtracks Distance Written by Emily King and Jeremy Most Performed by Emily King Courtesy of Making Music Records

User reviews 814

jtindahouse
Feb 2, 2023
How long is Knock at the Cabin? Powered by Alexa
February 3, 2023 (United States)
United States
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Tiếng Gõ Ở Căn Nhà Gỗ
Tabernacle, New Jersey, USA (Farmland)
Universal Pictures
Blinding Edge Pictures
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$20,000,000 (estimated)
$35,397,980
$14,127,170
Feb 5, 2023
$54,760,947

Technical specs

Runtime 1 hour 40 minutes
Dolby Digital
Dolby Atmos
Dolby Surround 7.1

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'Knock at the Cabin' Review: M. Night Shyamalan Delivers B-Movie Thrills to Your Door

Dave Bautista is a complex villain in a micro-horror movie in theaters now that asks how you can stop the end of the world.

A family in peril in Knock at the Cabin.

Knock, knock! Who's there? Why, it's M. Night Shyamalan with Knock at the Cabin -- another nerve-jangling good time at the movies.

Ever since Shyamalan's breakthrough feature The Sixth Sense gave us the unforgettable line "I see dead people," the writer-director has specialized in telling stories with a brutally simple hook, designed to unsettle you and stick around long after viewing. His latest film, Knock at the Cabin, in theaters now, is based on Paul G. Tremblay's novel The Cabin at the End of the World, and comes with a troubling premise: What would you sacrifice to save the world?

Opening in a quiet January still ruled by box office-conquering Avatar: The Way of Water , Knock at the Cabin is a small movie with some big ideas. It takes the hugest of dangers -- the end of the world -- but explores that in a savagely intimate microcosm.

Young child Wen (Kristen Cui) is enjoying a vacation in an isolated cabin when a huge man in sinister shirtsleeves (Dave Bautista) walks out of the woods and hints at a horrifying proposal. Wen and her adoptive parents, Eric and Andrew (Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge), find themselves trapped with a group of fanatics who are driven by nightmarish visions.

Four disturbed-looking people line up in a still from horror movie Knock at the Cabin.

Somebody's knockin' at the door...

Some movies would use this setup as a springboard for a survival horror in which the family is forced to defend themselves against strange interlopers in thrilling action sequences. But the story goes in a different, more character-driven and unsettling direction. The bad guys are both apologetic and apocalyptic, presenting their challenge in unnerving politeness.

Dave Bautista is excellent as the leader of the gang of shamefaced sociopaths. He's a looming monolith, a frame-filling physical nightmare whose implacability is made all the more terrifying by his sensitivity. He's much scarier here than he was as the one-dimensional muscle-bound Bond villain in Spectre , and he builds on the scene-stealing, hushed vulnerability we saw in Blade Runner 2049 .

Rupert Grint (the former Harry Potter star from Shyamalan's recent Apple TV Plus series Servant) is also superb as a twitchy, simmering redneck, adding a dose of violent volatility to the mix. Nikki Amuka-Bird and Abby Quinn have less substantial roles, but they provide some heart and even a couple of chuckles amid the mounting horror.

On the surface, Knock at the Cabin is an oppressive horror story that puts you in the shoes of a kidnapped family. From the cabin's flimsy and wide-open French doors to the moment where the dad is caught in a nightgown, the family is achingly vulnerable. Most of all, the presence of a young child will have parents wincing throughout (especially if they've read the book).

The threatening aspect of the story is agonizing, but there's a feeling that Shyamalan is pulling his punches. As in Shyamalan's other recent work, the unnerving atmosphere is reminiscent of movies like Hereditary and Get Out. But he doesn't commit to the nastiness that gives those films their shocking bite.

Equally, the taut simplicity of the setup isn't going to fill an entire movie's runtime. We get a bunch of flashbacks to the relationship between Eric and Andrew, which fleshes out their characters and helps you to identify with them. But the flashbacks are probably the most awkward part of the film. Though watching two people fall in love and support each other through their problems is heartwarming, it's not always interesting (or at least not as interesting as trying to escape some implacable weirdos in a cabin). That background throws in an intriguing and complicated twist, but it's never allowed to develop because the characters in question disappear from the story too early.

Knock at the Cabin is sparse and economically narrated, giving us plenty of space to ponder the deeper global themes thrown up by its desperate dilemma. It confronts the reality of a world going to hell and our power to stop it. And unlike the preachy tone of Adam McKay's apocalyptic satire Don't Look Up , Shyamalan's film is more subtle in conveying the responsibility we each take for the future of our planet. Ultimately, that's the predicament we're left with: What kind of sacrifices must our generation make to ensure that our children have a world to live in?

And of course, ever since The Sixth Sense, we're conditioned to expect a twist ending. Shyamalan's last film, the beach-based shocker Old , undid some of this genre with an overly literal ending that explained everything. Wisely, Knock at the Cabin leaves things more ambiguous.

You have to admire the way M. Night Shyamalan consistently delivers taut and disquieting B-movies with big ideas. Knock at the Cabin may not stretch the nerves as much as similar horror stories, but a Shyamalan film is always welcome when it comes knocking.

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Who’s there? … Abby Quinn, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Dave Bautista and Rupert Grint

Knock at the Cabin review – M Night Shyamalan does it again, in the worst way

The Sixth Sense director’s apocalyptic mystery horror is short on both mystery and horror and the ambiguous finale is deeply ridiculous

I n the most heart-sinking possible way, M Night Shyamalan has done it again. As so often in the past, he teases us with a great come-on, a great ultra-high-concept initial premise, a great opening scene. And then …? Well, it isn’t long before the film is revealed to be (and, really, only this technical term of criticism will do) complete bollocks.

It is a supposed apocalyptic nightmare (adapted from the 2018 horror bestseller The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay) which turns out to be a silly shaggy dog story whose big reveal is bizarrely anti-climactic, unscary and unimpressive: it is at once madly overblown and entirely negligible, exasperatingly deficient in ingenuity or genuine thrills with characters whose motivation is sketchy even on the drama’s own terms.

And yet like Shyamalan’s other preposterous apocalyptic clunker, The Happening from 2008 , there is a real frisson from that opening: a great dialogue scene between Dave Bautista and newcomer Kristen Cui, playing an eight-year-old Chinese-American girl called Wen. This child is playing alone in an idyllic woodland just by a cabin, behind which her two gay dads are hanging out: gentle, sweet-natured Eric (Jonathan Groff) and the more fierce-tempered Andrew (Ben Aldridge). Wen suddenly notices a sinister man-mountain lumbering towards her: Leonard, played by Bautista, who befriends her and is perhaps a gentle giant. But what does he want?

Leonard is soon joined by his three friends: Redmond (Rupert Grint), Ardiane (Abby Quinn) and Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), all carrying strange-looking weapons, and they patiently explain to this little girl that they are in receipt of information about the universe’s destiny. The imminent end of the world can only be averted by her family making some tough decisions. Wen, Eric and Andrew will have to decide which of them will voluntarily die to prevent the planet immolating. Terrifyingly, they take the family prisoner and their cultish fanaticism has a hypnotic, almost persuasive effect – and yet … could it be that one of these people is strangely familiar to the two men?

Well, yes it could be. That is one of many things in this story that is not satisfactorily resolved – or satisfactorily left mysteriously unresolved. The rational/irrational explanations for what appears to be happening are juxtaposed pretty predictably and the ambiguous finale is deeply ridiculous. Shyamalan’s previous film, the excellent horror-thriller Old , showed that he is certainly capable of maintaining a good idea to the finish line. Sadly, though, not this time.

Horror films
Action and adventure films
M Night Shyamalan
Rupert Grint

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'Knock at the Cabin' review: Dave Bautista is the true revelation of M. Night Shyamalan's apocalypse

When director M. Night Shyamalan comes knocking with one of his signature thrillers, you never know what’s going to appear. Maybe it's a kid who sees ghosts or a reluctant, unbreakable superhero, or a houseplant that wants to kill you.

But when there's a “ Knock at the Cabin ,” definitely answer the door. Based on Paul Tremblay’s provocative 2018 horror novel “The Cabin at the End of the World,” the pre-apocalyptic film (★★★ out of four; rated R; in theaters now) is top-shelf Shyamalan. Centered on a family having to make the most dreadful of decisions, “Knock” is a well-crafted intimate thriller that plays with your expectations and immerses you in a disconcerting situation.

'Knock at the Cabin': Dave Bautista talks crying on cue and seeking the 'elusive' rom-com

It also features a knockout dramatic performance from Dave Bautista , the massive – and massively talented – wrestler-turned-actor, who’s never been better.

Eight-year-old Wen (newcomer Kristen Cui) is vacationing at a remote Pennsylvania cabin with her adoptive dads, Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge) when a mountain of a man named Leonard (Bautista) approaches her in the woods. A gentle giant, Leonard disarms Wen by helping her catch grasshoppers and says he needs to talk with her parents.

Ranked: Every M. Night Shyamalan movie

That’s when she sees the armed strangers with him carrying makeshift weapons. Soon enough, Leonard knocks on the cabin door and he and his group – Redmond (Rupert Grint), Adriane (Abby Quinn) and Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird) – take the family hostage, insisting they don’t want to hurt anybody. However, they arrive with a doomsday task: Leonard tells Eric and Andrew that the family must sacrifice one of its own for the sake of humanity – if they don’t, well, cue R.E.M. because it's the end of the world as we know it.

The two dads are naturally skeptical: They figure this is more about them being gay than any actual final-days scenario, especially when Andrew recognizes one of the invaders. But as the story plays out and freaky stuff begins to happen outside their walls, some characters on both sides begin to change their views about the situation.

Narratively, it’s a big swing with heady themes that Shyamalan mostly pulls off, even leaning into hope with a story that could veer super-duper bleak. Like his last film, “Old,” “Cabin” is an adaptation of existing material rather than one of his earlier original stories. That said, it still compares well with his twisty greatest hits, like “Unbreakable” and “Signs.”

'Silence is even louder': Rupert Grint on why he criticized J.K. Rowling's transphobic comments

The filmmaker intersperses quite a few flashbacks, most of them unnecessary, and they often futz with the strong claustrophobic tension in the cabin. But he revels in absolutely chilling apocalyptic imagery, including enormous crushing tidal waves and airplanes falling from the sky, like the Book of Revelation taking pages from modern times.

While the small cast is good all around, Bautista is quietly spectacular in the film’s most important role. Like the others in his party, Leonard is a seemingly ordinary dude given an extraordinarily difficult task, and his gentle tortured soul belies his intimidating presence. At the same time, the “Guardians of the Galaxy” star brings a fearsome unpredictability to this mystery group as the tale unfolds: Are they members of some crazy cult, or are they actually on the level?

Saving the world vs. saving your family is an intriguingly rapturous concept to explore, and “Cabin” succeeds the same way Shyamalan’s best films do: by giving you something powerful to watch and something even deeper to think about later.

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Knock at the Cabin Reviews

With the help of a superb cast led by the phenomenal Dave Bautista - career-best performance - the filmmaker explores the emotional complexity found in the profound moral dilemmas placed upon human beings when faced with life-and-death decisions.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jul 25, 2023

"Knock at the Cabin" is a well-made movie, and there's not a bad performance in the entire film. But Bautista steals the show...

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Family and the bond it forms is in full focus in Knock at the Cabin, set against the backdrop of unexplainable beliefs and “Boogie Shoes” by KC and the Sunshine Band.

Knock At The Cabin is FANTASTIC. Top tier M Night Shyamalan that reminded me of why I love him as a filmmaker. Dave Bautista is PHENOMENAL & brings such humanity to a film that genuinely is the definition of life flashing before your eyes.

Knock at the Cabin is a tense thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat with it's unique premise, and impress you with it's cinematography and performances. The outcome may be a little lacklustre, but the journey is well-crafted.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 24, 2023

Knock at the Cabin is middle-of-the-road fare for Shyamalan. It doesn’t reach his directorial heights, but is well above his lows. If nothing else, it’s still refreshing to see a director consistently swinging for the fences.

Full Review | Jul 24, 2023

Knock at the Cabin isn’t completely fruitless, however it’s also unremarkable.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 23, 2023

Even though his spiritual successor, Jordan Peele, is reaching for the A-plus B movie torch, Night remains the industry standard.

Full Review | Jul 21, 2023

While its messaging may be muddled due to narrative changes from its source material, which might have given it a darker and dread-filled tone, Knock at the Cabin marks M. Night Shyamalan’s return to form.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jul 19, 2023

For his whole career Shyamalan has crafted original tales and thrown them into the toilet. Now he takes somebody else's pointed, original terror and flushes it entirely with the kind of alterations that shows how little he understood about the book.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jun 13, 2023

By completely dismantling and radically reworking the third act, Shyamalan has ended up with a film that leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | May 24, 2023

You almost always have to decide if you’re willing to accept the obvious problems in [Shyamalan's] movies in order to also get the truly great stuff.

Full Review | Apr 21, 2023

As much as Shyamalan tries to cloak Knock at the Cabin’s central conflict in metaphysical horror and familial crisis, disbelief persists: The viewer is always aware that they are watching another trite and incurious M. Night Shyamalan film.

Full Review | Apr 18, 2023

A remarkably tense thriller with a killer premise placing the fate of humanity in the hands of one family. If it’s not Shyamalan’s best film, it’s undoubtedly in his top three.

Full Review | Original Score: 9.5/10 | Apr 16, 2023

Shyamalan's obsession with the macabre, the weird and the disconcerting has turned him easily hooked to good premises that blur once you try to develop them. Dave Bautista is an incredible actor. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Apr 10, 2023

A movie with high stakes, but small horrors.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 7, 2023

Fans of the book will note that there will be a different ending. M Night Shyamalan is not Frank Darabont and does not yet have the directing gravitas to pull off that ending. In this current emotional atmosphere, it wouldn’t have been the right time.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 18, 2023

M. Night Shyamalan doesn’t reveal his hand until the very end. And then the discussion begins. Like so many of his films, “Knock at the Cabin” prompts many more questions than it answers.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 15, 2023

Shymalan’s latest is compellingly perverse and wracked with a real sense of menace, making its hopeful denouement something of a betrayal.

Full Review | Mar 6, 2023

A pretty profound idea to play with, but one that winds up clashing with the practicalities of the actual plot at hand.

Full Review | Mar 4, 2023

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Knock at the cabin, common sense media reviewers.

Strange, gruesome, but effective thriller about compassion.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The big question addressed is whether humanity is

Eric and Andrew are examples of good parents -- at

Main characters are a White gay couple (Jonathan G

Killings and death. Blood seeps through white clot

Several uses of "f--k" or "f---ing." Also "bulls--

In flashback, characters have drinks in a bar (som

Positive Messages

The big question addressed is whether humanity is worth saving. Movie argues that while humans do terrible things and there are lies and deceptions and evil cults, there's also great beauty, great hope, and the power of love.

Positive Role Models

Eric and Andrew are examples of good parents -- at least for a little while, until their lives are interrupted.

Diverse Representations

Main characters are a White gay couple (Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge) who have a young adopted daughter (Chinese American actor Kristen Cui) with a facial difference (her scar suggests a repaired cleft lip). The four intruders are played by Dave Bautista (who's half Filipino), Nikki Amuka-Bird (who's Black), and Abby Quinn and Rupert Grint (who are White). TV news commentators include many characters of color and women. Director/co-writer Shyamalan, who appears in one of his usual cameos, is Indian American. Leonard (Bautista) counters stereotypes often associated with large, muscular people by turning out to be gentle, thoughtful, and compassionate.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Killings and death. Blood seeps through white cloth. Bloody wounds. Character slits own neck, blood seeping through clothing. Guns and shooting. Menacing homemade weapons. Fighting, swinging weapons, punching. Character with bloody face. Character crashes to floor, has concussion. Hate crime: A man in a bar smashes a bottle over a gay man's head; bloody wounds. Person clubbed in knee. Man throws pebbles in woman's face. Scary news footage includes planes crashing, viruses, tsunami, flooding, etc. Building on fire. Dialogue: "My father used to beat the s--t out of me." Creepy, unsettling drawings during opening titles.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Several uses of "f--k" or "f---ing." Also "bulls--t," "horses--t," "bitch," "bastard," "ass," "goddamn," "oh Jesus God," "d--k," "crap."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

In flashback, characters have drinks in a bar (some have too many). A character says "I like beer."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Knock at the Cabin is a horror-thriller from director M. Night Shyamalan about two dads ( Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge ) and their young daughter (Kristen Cui) who are asked by four intruders to execute one member of their family in order to save humanity. Based on a novel by Paul Tremblay, it's a suspenseful, economical, and even intimate film that wrestles with the question of what aspects of humanity are actually worth saving. Violence is intense: There are killings, bloody wounds, blood seeping through clothing, guns and shooting, a character slicing their own neck, fighting, bludgeoning with weapons, a hate crime, terrifying news footage, a concussion, and more. Language includes "f--k" and "f---ing," "bulls--t," "bitch," "bastard," "ass," and "goddamn." A flashback takes place in a bar, with some drinking and drunkenness. Dave Bautista and Rupert Grint co-star. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parents say (8)
Kids say (14)

Based on 8 parent reviews

On the edge of my seat!

What's the story.

In KNOCK AT THE CABIN, Eric ( Jonathan Groff ), Andrew ( Ben Aldridge ), and their daughter, Wen (Kristen Cui), are vacationing in a quiet cabin. While Wen is out collecting grasshoppers, she's approached by Leonard ( Dave Bautista ), who tells her that he wants to be her friend. Before long, three other people -- Sabrina ( Nikki Amuka-Bird ), Ardiane ( Abby Quinn ), and Redmond ( Rupert Grint ) -- approach, all carrying strange-looking weapons. Wen and her dads lock themselves in the cabin, but soon, Leonard and the others force their way inside. Once Eric and Andrew are subdued and tied up, Leonard makes an unexpected request: The family must decide to kill one among them in order to save all of humanity. If not, the apocalypse is coming.

Is It Any Good?

M. Night Shyamalan 's horror-thriller makes terrific use of its intimate scale and level-headed approach, generating suspense through suggestion and surprising empathy for the characters. Shyamalan doesn't usually do adaptations, but here he lets Paul Tremblay's novel The Cabin at the End of the World do all the heavy lifting. As a result, Knock at the Cabin showcases the director's singular, spatial visual style without crumbling under the lackluster writing that sometimes sabotages his work. That said, the movie does lose some of its suspense as it ramps up and reveals more information in the final act. But Knock at the Cabin starts economically and emotionally and rarely falters. Bautista sets the tone with his Leonard character, countering stereotypes often associated with large, muscular people by turning out to be gentle, thoughtful, and compassionate (he seems genuinely hurt at the suggestion that he might be lying about this apocalyptic scenario). For all of the threat and death on the line, the characters' tense, back-and-forth conversations are mainly about love and hope. And the fight between the worst of humanity and the best of humanity keeps viewers constantly guessing.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Knock at the Cabin 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

What do you think you might do in this situation? Is humanity worth such an extraordinary sacrifice? Why, or why not?

What positive representations did you notice in the film? Are stereotypes used?

Is the movie scary? What's the appeal of horror movies ? Why do people sometimes like to be scared?

If you've read the book the movie is based on, how does the film compare?

Movie Details

In theaters : February 3, 2023
On DVD or streaming : May 9, 2023
Cast : Dave Bautista , Jonathan Groff , Rupert Grint
Director : M. Night Shyamalan
Inclusion Information : Asian actors, Gay actors
Studio : Universal Pictures
Genre : Thriller
Topics : Book Characters
Run time : 100 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : violence and language
Last updated : October 23, 2023

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Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Review: ‘Knock at the Cabin’ twists the home invasion horror

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Dave Bautista, from left, Abby Quinn, and Nikki Amuka-Bird in a scene from “Knock at the Cabin.” (Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Ben Aldridge, from left, Kristen Cui, and Jonathan Groff in a scene from “Knock at the Cabin.” (Universal Pictures via AP)

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Knock. Knock.

It being mid-winter (typically a doldrums in movie theaters), it’s a cozy relief to be able to throw open the door and find M. Night Shyamalan standing there with his near-annual helping of high-concept thriller. His last one, “Old,” about vacationers trapped on a private beach where aging is accelerated — a kind of high-speed “White Lotus” — fittingly arrived in the summer. But this quieter, gloomier time of year seems perfectly designed for Shyamalan to burst in with his signature brand of big-screen bonkers and some new twists to the age-old question of “Who’s there?”

“Knock at the Cabin,” which opens in theaters Friday, is at once like every previous Shyamalan film and a thrilling departure. Gimmicky set-up? Check. Queasy spiritualism? You bet. But as a self-contained, handsomely staged thriller — after the knocking, the film takes place almost entirely within a remote cabin — Shyamalan’s latest finds the filmmaker working in an appealingly straightforward and stripped-down fashion.

We have our cabin, our small cast of characters and, above all, our preposterous premise. Though Shyamalan’s films often flirt with higher powers and existential conundrums, nothing reigns in his movie universe more than The Concept. And in the gripping “Knock at the Cabin,” he carefully teases it, exploits it and dutifully follows it to its ultimate conclusion with the command of a seasoned professional.

Just outside a cabin in a wooded forest, 7-year-old Gwen (Kristen Cui) is collecting grasshoppers in a glass jar. “I’m just going to learn about you for a while,” she tells one as she slides it into the jar. Shyamalan, too, is gathering specimens into a hermetically sealed vessel for inquiry. One calmly walks right out of the woods. A hulking, bespectacled man (Dave Bautista) strides up to Gwen, politely introduces himself as Leonard and makes kindly chit chat while occasionally glancing back over his shoulder. Then he says the reason he’s there makes him heartbroken. He describes it as “maybe the most important job in the history of the world.”

Before you exclaim “Podiatry!” Leonard’s job turns out to be a tad more sinister. He and three others, who soon also emerge from the forest, are there, as Leonard patiently lays out, to give Gwen’s parents a choice that will dictate the fate of the world. After forcing their way into the cabin, Leonard — flanked by Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Redmond (Rupert Grint) and Adriane (Abby Quinn) — informs Gwen’s two dads, Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge) — that they must make a sacrifice to stave off global apocalypse. Each has come to the cabin after all-consuming visions — like warped versions of those that preoccupy the characters in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” — of the doom that awaits if the family in this random cabin doesn’t, within hours, kill one of themselves.

This isn’t, like last year’s “Barbarian,” another chastening example of the dangers that lurk within the poorly chosen Airbnb, (though I, for one, will henceforth not be clicking “Shyamalanian allegory” in all future bookings). This is, like most of Shyamalan’s schemes, a sincere metaphorical proposition. What’s more important: Preserving one’s family or the larger world?

There are, of course, reasons to be dubious of strangers who turn up in your vacation rental asking for blood to spare humanity. Are they delusional? Has this gay couple been targeted? Do their demands not sound a little like the nuttery of some of today’s real-world attackers? Eric and Andrew sense the same kind of brutality that they’ve experienced all their lives as gay men. Flashbacks to their past, including moments of bliss and pain, suggest this lurid episode is part of a larger narrative of a loving family forged against a harsh world. “Always together” is the couple’s mantra.

But the way the four intruders speak is at odds with that possibility. They seem genuinely concerned for the wellbeing of the family. They identify themselves as regular people, some with families of their own, who are reluctantly but necessarily carrying out a duty. They are making their own sacrifice, too. Bautista, in one of his finest performances, is more sweet than menacing, even while wielding a heavy weapon. Amuka-Bird, too, is an affectingly sensitive presence.

The performances, all around, are convincing, and Shyamalan arrestingly stages the intense standoff as blood begins to spill and calamities, seen on television, mount. The tale, adapted from Paul G. Tremblay’s 2018 novel “The Cabin at the End of the World” with a notable tweak to the ending, cleverly inverts the home invasion thriller.

There are, undoubtedly, deeper avenues of exploration left unexamined. But there are also B-movie pleasures that deviate from horror convention, and even some of the director’s own trademark sensibilities. Shyamalan doesn’t pump up the violence, nor does he rely on plot twists to carry “Knock at the Cabin” along. Instead, the film works as a brutal, neatly distilled kind of morality play that toys with fatalism, family and climate change allegory. What most distinguishes Shyamalan’s film is how it dares to consider whether some things are more important than family. In apocalyptic big screen spectacles, family is almost always the last and most abiding refuge. Here, it may be an impediment.

“Knock at the Cabin,” a Universal Pictures release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for violence and language. Running time: 100 minutes. Three stars out of four.

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

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Knock at the Cabin Is M. Night Shyamalan’s Best Film Since The Village

An enormous hulk of a man offering a flower to a young girl in the woods. It recalls one of the most enduring and chilling images in all of horror, from James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931). That’s just one reason why we sense such dread in the opening scene of M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin, as Dave Bautista’s Leonard murmurs to 7-year-old Wen (Kristen Cui), “I’m not from around here, but I’m looking to make some new friends. Can I talk to you?” Shyamalan makes sure to shoot Bautista from all the right angles, for maximum hugeness. And the actor plays it perfectly, his voice gentle, his eyes troubled, candor and reticence clashing beneath those unreal shoulders. We have no idea where this is going, even as we realize it can’t go anywhere good.

If you’ve seen the trailers for Knock at the Cabin , you probably already know that Leonard and a trio of strangers will soon present Wen and her parents, Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge), with an impossible choice: They must willingly sacrifice one member of their family in order to avert the apocalypse. Not an apocalypse but the apocalypse. “First, the cities will drown,” Leonard intones. “The oceans will rise up … A terrible plague will descend … The skies will fall and crash to the earth like pieces of glass.” Is he for real, or have our heroes been waylaid by a quartet of psychos? Again, Bautista’s performance stirs the uncertainty: The quaver in Leonard’s voice tells us that he believes what he’s saying but that he can’t believe that he’s saying what he’s saying — which in turn helps us believe what he’s saying.

Among the qualities that make Shyamalan such an effective director of thrillers is his fluency in the many languages of genre. The film smoothly moves from the textures of one type of chiller to another, even as the mood remains eerily consistent. That Frankenstein opening soon gives way to a home-invasion picture. Then, as Leonard’s cohorts try to convince Eric and Andrew of the reality of their cause, they speak about their families and their jobs and all they’ve given up to come out here to talk to these good people, and we recognize the fervency: It’s what we hear from deranged cult followers in movies. Finally, when we do catch glimpses of the chaos that Leonard foretells, we may realize that we’ve been inside a disaster flick all along.

In his best work, Shyamalan has also infused such genre theatrics with a decidedly earnest (and audience-friendly) form of humanity. It’s what defined his early films and his early success. But he seemed to wean himself off this tendency in later hits such as The Visit (2015) and Split (2016), which were a lot more ruthless and severe than pictures like The Village (2004), Signs (2002), and Unbreakable (2000). (That might have been because the director’s most emotionally naked film, 2006’s Lady in the Water , almost brought his career crashing down around him.) In Knock at the Cabin , that sincerity comes roaring back, not just in its flashbacks to Eric and Andrew’s early years and their adoption of Wen, but also in the snatches of information we get about the home invaders themselves. Leonard is an elementary-school teacher and bartender; Adriane (Abby Quinn) is a chef and a single mother; Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird) is a post-op nurse; Redmond (Rupert Grint, unrecognizable) is a shithead from Boston. Such moments make these people sadder, but also more dangerous; we learn just enough to start wondering about their lives, and a real person onscreen is always more menacing than a one-dimensional monster.

Knock at the Cabin is based on Paul Tremblay’s 2018 novel, The Cabin at the End of the World , and the script follows the book pretty closely for the first two-thirds, before delivering a dramatically different final act. There are deeper, spiritual differences between the two as well. Both are works of the apocalyptic imagination, but Tremblay’s tale is more insular, working the ambiguity of the situation to explore the characters’ faith and emotional perseverance; he keeps us mostly (and purposefully) in the dark about whether the terrible things Leonard is prophesying are in fact coming to pass. Shyamalan, however, understands that there is usually little ambiguity around such horrors in cinema, at least in today’s cinema. For him, uncertainty is merely a grace note to help build suspense (and to give the characters dimension), but there’s little doubt as to what’s going on. In 2023, when someone in a movie says the world is ending, it usually is.

That might be because of the way we make movies nowadays, but it might also be because of the way we think nowadays. Look at the TV and read the news; it seems like our world is always ending, and we are always helpless to change it. Earthquakes and tsunamis; pandemics run amok; planes falling from the sky. These ideas are all in Tremblay’s novel, but Shyamalan runs with the imagery, activating our sense memory of the horrors we’ve already lived through in the 21st century, as well as what we imagine will be the horrors to come. (And, depending on who we are, the horrors we imagine, or at least their causes, might be radically different.)

Grief often lies at the heart of Shyamalan’s work. Usually, that grief is in the past — traumatic losses, lives left unlived, bodies left broken. This time, however, it seems to lie in the future. In that opening scene, Leonard looks at the slight dent on Wen’s mouth where she once had a cleft lip. “I don’t have a scar like you, but if you look inside, you’ll see that my heart is broken,” he says. He’s talking specifically about the grisly deed he’s about to undertake. But in the grim quiet of the forest, Shyamalan and Bautista let the man’s sadness linger and expand. In his mournful silence, his heart breaks for the whole world.

At the same time, Knock at the Cabin reverses that aforementioned helplessness. What if , it asks, you could change things with just one act? Indeed, it makes a fine analog — and even maybe a counterpoint — to the common superhero movie, in which beings of great power come together over and over again to save the Earth. Here, a group of ordinary people come together to do the same, but, in a rather biblical twist, they can only do so in the most awful, gruesome, terrifying way. The result is the most exhilarating and wounding film M. Night Shyamalan has made in many, many years.

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Knock at the Cabin ending explained: Here's how the M. Night Shyamalan twist differs from the book

Let's unpack that M. Night Shyamalan big finish.

Warning: This article contains spoilers about Knock at the Cabin .

With another M. Night Shyamalan movie comes another Shyamalan twist. Following Glass , Old , and the latest episodes of Servant , Knock at the Cabin delivers a story that's meant to keep audiences guessing until its climactic ending.

Based on Paul G. Tremblay's 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World , the film sees husbands Andrew ( Ben Aldridge ) and Eric ( Jonathan Groff ) vacationing at a lakeside cabin in the woods with their daughter, Wen (Kristen Cui), when the unthinkable happens. Four strangers — a large, spectacled elementary school teacher named Leonard ( Dave Bautista ), a seemingly kind-hearted cook named Ardiane (Abby Quinn), a conflicted nurse named Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), and a rough-and-tumble man named Redmond ( Rupert Grint ) — invade their lodging.

The men are tied up and presented with a cruel task: choose a member of their family to sacrifice. The strangers promise they won't make the decision for them, but they will not allow any of them to leave the premises until a decision has been made. If the family does not pick a sacrifice, the kidnappers are convinced the world will come to an end.

Are they lying or is the world really on the brink of the apocalypse? Below, we break down what happens in the ending and how it differs from the book.

The entire movie is meant to keep the audience guessing. The strangers claim that one family is chosen every so often to decide the fate of all of humanity. They guess Andrew and Eric were chosen because of the immense love they share for each other and their daughter. Collective visions have seemingly brought these four disparate individuals together to deliver the challenge.

Each time Andrew and Eric refuse to make the sacrifice, the strangers kill one of their own with "tools" they've built, again based on visions they claim to have had. They start with Redmond and work their way up to Leonard. Each death is meant to unleash a plague upon the world.

Andrew, a lawyer, is the more logical one of the family who has a reasonable answer for the strangers' Biblical rantings. When Redmond is killed, Leonard turns on the TV to watch a tsunami kill thousands off the California coast. Andrew points out that the news broadcast was previously recorded and believes their kidnappers are keeping track of the time to coincide a death with a news broadcast. They are all just deluded conspiracy theorists who found purpose in shady internet chatrooms, he claims.

Eric, however, is more empathetic and subject to suggestion. He was also concussed when the strangers first attacked them, which may or may not account for the visions he sees throughout the film, that of a human figure glimpsed within the light.

The family continues to watch the strangers kill themselves and supposed plagues play out on television broadcasts, not fully knowing if they are real or not. All planes currently in flight fall from the sky, a mysterious virus (not COVID) rapidly spreads around the globe, and devastating lighting strikes scorch the planet without warning.

While it seems like the family might make it out of this alive, it becomes time for Leonard to kill himself. Before he does, he warns the men that after he's gone they have mere moments to make a sacrifice before they are forced to roam an apocalyptic hellscape with Wen as the only surviving human left on the planet. Eric, now believing the strangers were really the four horsemen of the apocalypse, convinces Andrew to shoot him dead to save his family and the rest of mankind.

Upon leaving the cabin with Eric's corpse inside, Andrew and Wen observe a world that seems like it has been scarred by the plagues. Andrew spots at least one plane fall from the sky, and the dark clouds that have gathered above have mysteriously dispersed. They arrive at a nearby diner and find the entire establishment has been watching the same news feeds they viewed with bated breath, only now the relieved anchors are reporting that the aforementioned plagues are easing up without an apparent cause.

The events play out rather differently in Tremblay's book. First of all, Wen dies from an accidental gunshot during a scuffle with Leonard in the cabin. The strangers claim that her death doesn't count because the family didn't willingly choose her as the sacrifice. Choice wasn't a factor. The outcome of this sequence is completely left out of the movie.

There are also some cosmetic changes. For instance, Andrew kills Adriane with the gun from his car in the book, while he ends up killing Sabrina with the pistol in the movie. But the biggest change beyond Wen's death is how the movie interprets the ending.

The Cabin at the End of the World leaves the reader to draw their own conclusion. The fathers, mourning the loss of their child, refuse to kill each other. Instead, they drive away from the cabin with Wen's body in the back towards an uncertain future. The film decides to take a more definitive approach and say the strangers were the heralds of the apocalypse, and Eric's choice to sacrifice himself saved billions of lives.

It's not like the classic "I see dead people" Bruce Willis twist or the other Bruce Willis twist from the Glass cinematic universe, but it does provide a new viewpoint.

In Knock at the Cabin, a Terrific Dave Bautista Saves M. Night Shyamalan From Himself

Dave Bautista gives a career-best performance as a messenger of the apocalypse.

M. Night Shyamalan movies live or die by their twists.

At least, that’s the accepted thinking, based on the filmmaker’s famous (or infamous) inclination to include a jaw-dropping twist in most of his movies. The twist can shock, or baffle, or turn the movie’s entire narrative on its head — but if it’s unsatisfying, the entire film is written off . It’s a reputation that’s overshadowed Shyamalan’s whole career , and one that he’ll probably never fully escape. But refreshingly, with Knock at the Cabin , it seems that Shyamalan has outgrown the plot twist.

Based on Paul G. Tremblay’s 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World , Knock at the Cabin follows the story of a loving family — Eric (Jonathan Groff), Andrew (Ben Aldridge), and their adopted daughter Wen (Kristen Cui) — whose vacation at a remote cabin is interrupted by four strangers arriving at their door. Led by the hulking Leonard (Dave Bautista), the strangers Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Adriane (Abby Quinn), and Redmond (Rupert Grint) insist that they are there to avert the apocalypse. But they need Eric, Andrew, and Wen’s help with a terrible decision: the three must decide which of them must be sacrificed to save all of humanity from dying in a series of world-destroying plagues.

And that’s it, there’s no twist. Instead, Knock at the Cabin is a straightforward exercise in nail-biting suspense, steered by a filmmaker at the height of his confidence in his craft, and powered by a tremendous antagonistic turn from Bautista, who gives the best performance of his career yet.

It’s clear this is Bautista’s movie from the opening moments, when he emerges from the woods to approach Wen, who’s collecting grasshoppers outside the cabin. Bautista’s Leonard first appears as just a blurry figure in the distance, before we cut to his feet, his boots stomping on the worn-down path like some ominous death knell, each heavy thump reverberating through the screen until it settles in your bones. Shot from afar, Bautista’s large physique feels inherently threatening, but Shyamalan chooses to mostly show him in extreme close-up, Bautista’s gentle, open face putting the audience — and Wen — at ease as he asks her about her grasshoppers and her family.

But then, things start to feel a little off . As Leonard and Wen’s conversation continues, each cut becomes a deeper Dutch angle. A wide shot of the woods distorts with a dolly zoom, and soon, three other people emerge from the woods, each carrying a strange, primitive weapon. Leonard apologizes to Wen “with all of my broken heart,” and she flees to the cabin, pulling her dads inside and insisting they lock the doors. And the unrelenting barrage of dread and suspense begins.

Eric (Jonathan Groff), Andrew (Ben Aldridge), and their adopted daughter Wen (Kristen Cui) fend off strangers in Knock at the Cabin .

Shyamalan might have found his perfect collaborator in Bautista, who nails the tricky balance of earnest tone and stilted dialogue typical of the filmmaker’s movies, all while radiating a terrifying, unreadable fanaticism that feels equal turns compassionate and menacing. He’s a gentle giant who apologizes to his would-be victims and puts cartoons on for Wen, but he believes in his task with a religious fervor that makes his every action incomprehensible to everyone but him.

Shyamalan’s signature quirk of awkward dialogue, which is less pronounced here thanks to co-writers Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman, feels somehow natural coming from Bautista’s lips — Leonard’s words feel rehearsed because they are, his actions are practiced because he did. And despite the limitations of the character, Bautista manages to convey deep empathy and sadness with every word he utters; it feels like his short, heartbreaking scene in Blade Runner 2049 turned up to 11. This is a man given a terrible burden he wouldn’t wish on anyone, and Bautista sells that.

But Knock at the Cabin is not just Bautista’s movie. Amuka-Bird, Quinn, and Grint are all standouts as Bautista’s uncertain fellow horsemen of the apocalypse, with all of them a little apologetic, all of them scared. Grint especially, as the jittery, hotheaded wild card, nearly steals the scenes from Bautista a few times.

But if there’s anyone to hold a candle to Bautista, it’s Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge as Eric and Andrew, whose stubborn resistance to the strangers’ awful demands is only superseded by their unflagging loyalty to each other and Wen. Unlike the four strangers, Eric and Andrew are given the benefit of a character arc, with flashbacks to their lives together interwoven throughout the movie. It helps the two feel like the most fleshed-out and intensely human of Shyamalan characters, an achievement aided by the fact that Groff and Aldridge seem to have sidestepped the “awkward dialogue” requirements of his films.

Leonard (Dave Bautista), (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Adriane (Abby Quinn), and Redmond (Rupert Grint) in Knock at the Cabin .

Shyamalan hasn’t quashed all of his worst instincts — Knock at the Cabin feels almost unbearably earnest at times, and its messages are spelled out a little too obviously — but it does feel like he’s reached a new level of confidence as a filmmaker that he was just starting to gain with Old . Given a straightforward thriller like this, Shyamalan lets loose a little with his filmmaking style, the aforementioned Dutch angles and dolly zooms being only a few of the directorial tricks he uses to amp up the dread. It might be his most technically impressive film thus far, even if it’s not his most narratively exciting one.

Knock at the Cabin is a rock-solid thriller, but not an amazing one. Its Biblical apocalypse prevents it from playing as anything more than a parable, and limits it from reaching for any deeper meaning beneath the surface-level suspense. The latter makes some readings of the film’s ending as potentially insidious feel thin. But as a showcase for Shyamalan’s evolving abilities as a filmmaker, it does a great job. And even if Knock at the Cabin doesn’t live or die by a twist, it gets all the life it needs from a terrific, terrifying Bautista.

Knock at the Cabin opens in theaters on February 3.

This article was originally published on Feb. 1, 2023

Science Fiction

Knock at the Cabin Review: M. Night Shyamalan's Apocalypse Thriller Stumbles

A captive family must make a terrible choice or doom humanity in Knock at the Cabin. Starring Dave Bautista, Ben Aldridge, and Jonathan Groff.

The end of the world is nigh, but can be prevented by a brutal choice. M. Night Shyamalan brings the apocalypse to a terrified family's doorstep with Knock at the Cabin . Based on the novel by Paul G. Tremblay, a home invasion takes an ominous turn with the future of humanity at stake. If only the twisted premise paid off beyond absurd contrivances with the use of a homosexual couple and their adopted Asian daughter as props. No surprises are offered after a taut open. A predictable narrative plays out as expected in a film that stumbles.

The Hulking Leonard

Young Wen (Kristen Cui) collects grasshoppers in the woods near her parent's secluded Pennsylvania vacation cabin. She's frightened when the hulking Leonard (Dave Bautista) appears seemingly out of the blue. A wary Wen warns that she shouldn't talk to strangers. Leonard agrees to be her friend but apologizes sincerely for what's to come. Other figures emerge carrying medieval weapons. Wen races inside and locks the front door.

Related: Cassandro Review: A Never-Better Gael García Bernal Leads a Touching Biopic Where Camp Meets Verisimilitude

Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and Eric (Jonathan Groff) wonder what's all the commotion. A breathless Wen warns that people are coming for them. Her fathers' skepticism turns to concern when Leonard knocks. Andrew can't believe what he's seeing outside their window. They grab Wen and try to barricade every entrance. It's a futile ploy when glass can be easily shattered.

Choose to Kill

The family huddles in fear as they are restrained. The four nervous captors introduce themselves. Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird) is a trauma nurse that spent all of her savings to be there. Ardiane (Abby Quinn) cooks as a line chef in a restaurant. She also has a young child. The erratic Redmond (Rupert Grint) works at a gas utility. Leonard teaches the second grade. The disparate quartet have dire purpose. Mankind will be destroyed unless the captives choose to kill one of their own.

Shyamalan ( The Sixth Sense , Old ) initially succeeds in establishing a fraught atmosphere. Imagine being tied up by prophecy-spewing doomsayers with your precious daughter as a hostage. Andrew and Eric have a palpable fear for her safety. This changes when it becomes clear that the prisoners cannot be harmed. The hook is that their decision not to kill triggers a catastrophic event worldwide. Are they willing to accept personal sacrifice or let everyone else die horribly? Leonard only has to fire up the television for them to see disaster unfold as proof.

The End of Days

Knock at the Cabin flashes back to the couple's decision to adopt a baby. The subjugation and discrimination they face doesn't dissuade their embrace of family. Parents always want the best for their children. If you follow that to a logical conclusion, trying to raise Wen in a desolate hellscape with no other people would never be a viable option. You can't send the kid to school if it's burnt to a crisp. The obvious outcome deflates tension like a balloon.

Willing suspension of disbelief can only go so far. The biblical end of days makes more sense than some of the action in this film. Several scenes strain credulity to the breaking point. Shyamalan uncharacteristically drops zero bombshells. Additional elements were needed to stoke intrigue.

Knock at the Cabin is a production of Blinding Edge Pictures, FilmNation Entertainment, and Wishmore Entertainment. It will be released theatrically on February 3rd from Universal Pictures .

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Knock at the Cabin First Reviews: Dave Bautista Shines in M. Night Shyamalan's Tense, Character-Driven Thriller

Critics say this is a return to form for shyamalan, who makes use of a chilling atmosphere and top-notch acting to bolster a somewhat understated story..

TAGGED AS: First Reviews , movies

When M. Night Shymalan comes knocking, fans of twisty thrillers answer. The writer and director’s latest, Knock at the Cabin , should be met by his usual crowd, given that its premise contains yet another suspenseful scenario. In the movie, four strangers show up at a family’s cabin claiming that the end of the world is near. Only one thing will keep the apocalypse from happening, but it’s a solution that brings a great moral dilemma. Initial reviews of Knock at the Cabin are mostly positive, and one thing is clear: Shyamalan is still great at creating a chilling atmosphere, and Dave Bautista’s performance is remarkable.

Here’s what critics are saying about Knock at the Cabin :

Is Shyamalan back in peak form?

With his latest film Knock at the Cabin , Shyamalan has delivered his best film in years. – Dan Bayer, Next Best Picture

Knock at the Cabin is close to a return to form for Shyamalan. If it’s not on the level of his very best, it shows that he’s still got it. – Joey Magidson, Awards Radar

It’s a well-crafted, suspenseful piece of filmmaking that shows off Shyamalan’s still formidable skills. – Cary Darling, Houston Chronicle

The film is Shyamalan at his most restrained and deliberate. – Sam Stone, CBR

It might be his most technically impressive film thus far, even if it’s not his most narratively exciting one. – Hoai-Tran Bui, Inverse

Shyamalan’s working somewhere near the height of his powers to remind us all that there’s more to him than twist endings. – Charles Pulliam-Moore, The Verge

Knock at the Cabin has already been hailed in some quarters as Shyamalan’s return to form. That said, those filmgoers previously irritated by his propensity for mystical woo will probably still come away disappointed. – Jason Best, What to Watch

Dave Bautista in Knock at the Cabin (2023)

How does Knock at the Cabin compare to his other movies?

With his latest, Knock at the Cabin , he may have finally made a film that ranks with his best work. – Cary Darling, Houston Chronicle

Shyamalan’s latest cinematic confrontation with mortality and meaning, Knock at the Cabin , is among his best work. – Chase Hutchinson, Seattle Times

I don’t think Knock at the Cabin is one of M. Night Shyamalan’s best films to date, but it’s firmly in the category right below that. It’s solid. – Germain Lussier, io9.com

Knock At The Cabin , while a relatively minor feature, is Shyamalan’s most effective effort since The Village . – Kyle Pinion, Screen Rex

There are elements of greatness, such as Shyamalan’s ability to tell a scary global phenomenon from the perspective of one family (much like he did in Signs). – Jonathan Sim, ComingSoon.net

What works best in the movie?

You can tell [Shyamalan] is getting back to basics though with Knock at the Cabin , stripping down spectacle to lean into an impossible premise. – Joey Magidson, Awards Radar

The empathy it displays toward all of its characters marks it as one of the few apocalyptic dramas to earn its enduring faith in humanity. – Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

One of Shyamalan’s touchstones as a horror storyteller is his sincerity… Shyamalan’s adoration for the dads and their sweetly introverted daughter is evidenced by scenes of genuine tenderness. – David Sims, The Atlantic

Shyamalan lets loose a little… As a showcase for Shyamalan’s evolving abilities as a filmmaker, it does a great job. – Hoai-Tran Bui, Inverse

The direction is taut, the action attractively lensed, yet it’s the unusual ensemble of actors that really wins you over. – Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, metro.co.uk

Knock At The Cabin does not waste any time getting into the nitty-gritty of it all. Within minutes, Dave Bautista is already tromping through the woods to get to the cabin, and things only get more intense from there. – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

Dave Bautista, Abby Quinn, and Nikki Amuka-Bird in Knock at the Cabin (2023)

Is it scary?

Shyamalan has found his groove again, popping off one squirm-in-your-seat, bite-your-nails moment after another. – Dan Bayer, Next Best Picture

The film itself never gets scary. It is more a thriller that will have you wondering what is and isn’t real. – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

[It] becomes less of a thriller than an unorthodox character study, especially as the film’s expertly deployed use of flashback slowly forms the emotional core of the story. – Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

The filmmaker prefers to cut away or frame deaths off-screen, a move that winds up minimizing the impact of the stakes when the film rarely leaves the cabin or its handful of characters. – Megan Navarro, Bloody Disgusting

It’s ultimately satisfactory entertainment for horror fans who don’t want to see anything too disturbing on screen. – Carla Hay, Culture Mix

How is the cast?

While all the cast give strong performances, it is Bautista who shines and shows his range in some key monologues. – Chase Hutchinson, Seattle Times

Bautista is the stand-out, granting Leonard a sense of calm that is at once friendly and deeply unsettling. – Dan Bayer, Next Best Picture

Bautista walks away with the film, giving incredible pathos to what could have felt like a villainous character. – Joey Magidson, Awards Radar

The role of Leonard is perfectly suited to the wrestler-turned-actor. As a fundamentally sympathetic antagonist, Bautista digs deeper into the timid sincerity and striking naivete already present in his Guardians of the Galaxy role. – Clarisse Loughrey, Independent

Bautista is fantastic… You believe that he believes what he says, which makes some moments all the more terrifying. – Matt Rodriguez, Shakefire

Grint especially, as the jittery, hotheaded wild card, nearly steals the scenes from Bautista a few times. – Hoai-Tran Bui, Inverse

Kristen Cui is the standout here. She is absolutely phenomenal… She is going places. – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

Kristen Cui in Knock at the Cabin (2023)

How does it compare to the book?

It’s purer now, whittled down to its ideological bones. – Clarisse Loughrey, Independent

If you have read the book, we can all but guarantee you will like that ending better, so don’t expect this changed version of the story to blow your minds. – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

[Shyamalan] has changed one plot point from the novel that changes the tone of the story’s ending in a way that… the film’s climax doesn’t feel entirely as earned. – Dan Bayer, Next Best Picture

It’s easy to see why the filmmakers chose to make these changes because there are many things in the book that would not be as “crowd-pleasing” to movie audiences. – Carla Hay, Culture Mix

Should we expect a twist?

Shyamalan hasn’t added one, allowing the whole film to play as straightforwardly as possible, much to the film’s credit. – Dan Bayer, Next Best Picture

The most suspenseful and intense moments come when we feel that the twist is about to be revealed — and then there isn’t one. – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

It wants to keep you guessing, but once the truth is revealed there’s little left to actually hold it up, and the film crumbles under its own weight. – Matt Rodriguez, Shakefire

Those seeking a twisty-turny set of cinematic surprises should get the requisite shocks they seek. – Eddie Harrison, film-authority.com

The prolific filmmaker has delivered one of his biggest surprises of all by telling a relatively straightforward thriller that places its characters in a fight for survival with wide-reaching implications. – Sam Stone, CBR

M. Night Shyamalan on the set of Knock at the Cabin (2023)

What are its biggest flaws?

While Knock at the Cabin works well in almost every way, it’s missing a spark of energy and intrigue that truly would’ve really knocked it out of the park. – Germain Lussier, io9.com

Knock is so emotionally flat that I found it impossible to care about. For a film in which the stakes couldn’t be higher, that’s a fatal failing. – Roger Moore, Roger’s Movie Nation

The scale never becomes as massive as it should… [It’s] a quickly paced but single-note and ineffectual apocalyptic tale. – Megan Navarro, Bloody Disgusting

The story is solid, but the filmmaking is not… [Shyamalan’s] directorial choices feel as amateurish and contrived as ever. – Louisa Moore, Screen Zealots

There is a hollow ending that wants you to think the story and these characters have some kind of redemption, but it’s a thinly-veiled insult to its audience. – Tom Santilli, Movie Show Plus

Will it make us look forward to the next Shyamalan movie?

After middling returns with Old and Glass , Knock at the Cabin doesn’t quite mark a complete return to form for Shyamalan, but it is a big step in the right direction. – Sam Stone, CBR

Old fans and Servant -heads alike know that M. Night Shyamalan never really left, but Knock at the Cabin feels like it just might convince those not in the know that he’s back. – Charles Pulliam-Moore, The Verge

Knock at the Cabin will serve as a reminder that Shyamalan should be celebrated as much for his craftsmanship as he is for his shock tactics. – Clarisse Loughrey, Independent

Here’s hoping he’s back for good. – Dan Bayer, Next Best Picture

Knock at the Cabin opens everywhere on February 3, 2023.

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“Knock at the Cabin,” Reviewed: Be Nice to the QAnoners, or They’ll Do an Apocalypse

By Richard Brody

A hefty and tall bald man holds a scaredlooking child on one arm and a huge pitchfork in the other another figure ...

Spoiler alert: the climactic event of “Knock at the Cabin” is a book burning. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that, lest anyone deem Hollywood a solid front of liberal messaging, this new film by M. Night Shyamalan provides yet another hefty counterexample. In a year that has delivered such models of illiberal retrenchment as “ Top Gun: Maverick ,” “ Tár ,” and “ Avatar: The Way of Water ,” “Knock at the Cabin” has the virtue of being the most daring, brazen, imaginative, and radical of them. It’s starkly posed as a conflict of faith against reason—and it presents a faith-based order that’s ready and willing to use violence in pursuit of its redemptive vision. So far, so apt. What’s jolting about Shyamalan’s film is its call to capitulation. The director puts the onus on the liberal and progressive element of American society to meet violent religious radicals more than halfway, lest they yield to even worse rages, lest they unleash an apocalypse.

Or, rather, the Apocalypse. The premise of the movie is the visitation, upon an ordinary American family, of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who aren’t all men and who show up not on horseback but by truck, and who turn a seemingly run-of-the-mill home-invasion thriller into a cosmic spectacle of metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. It’s also a suspense film, in which just about nothing but the plot matters, and therefore any discussion risks being spoiler-y; I’ll be careful, but be forewarned. The family that’s vacationing in the titular cabin, isolated in deep woods and far beyond cell-phone signals, comprises Andrew (Ben Aldridge), a human-rights lawyer; Eric (Jonathan Groff), whose job is unspecified; and their daughter, Wen (Kristen Cui), who discloses at the start that she’s nearly eight, and whom they adopted from China. The foursome of intruders is led by one Leonard (Dave Bautista), a soft-spoken hulk and second-grade teacher from Chicago; his companions are Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), a nurse from Southern California; Adriane (Abby Quinn), a line cook at a Mexican restaurant in Washington, D.C.; and Redmond (Rupert Grint), who works for a gas company in Medford, Massachusetts.

The first contact is made, in the woods, by Leonard, who espies Wen catching grasshoppers and gently tries to convince her that he’s a nice guy, not a creep, explaining that he needs to meet her parents and that it’s a matter of his job—“maybe the most important job in the history of the world.” (For a second, I thought he might be a film critic.) The foursome indeed knocks, and, when they’re denied entry, they break in by means of the weapons that they call tools: neo-medieval, seemingly homemade devices (such as a pickaxe and a mallet at the end of a thick broomstick). Then they make the demand that already went viral, long before the movie’s opening, by way of its trailers. The four intruders claim to have foreknowledge of impending disasters that will extinguish human life—unless this family chooses one member to sacrifice and then carries out the killing, and not by suicide. One trailer put the choice starkly—“save your family or save humanity”—but, of course, there’s no choice; they need to do both, and the movie’s main suspense is how they’ll manage to pull it off.

There’s no discussing “Knock at the Cabin” without disclosing another pair of salient details: first, the quartet is endowed with powers stronger than mere clairvoyance. They’re able to cause apocalyptic, high-body-count plagues and, in the course of the action, they don’t shrink from doing so in the name of a higher justice, or, as they say, “judgment.” (It’s never clear that the apocalypse that they foresee is anything more than the one that they themselves control.) Second, out of all the cabins and all the families that the apocalyptos could have picked, they landed on a place inhabited by a couple with whom they had history—one of the quartet happens to have been a gay-basher who attacked Andrew and left him with serious injuries as well as some non-Christian thoughts about aggressive self-defense. (That the basher’s real name is revealed to be O’Bannon, an unambiguously political wink, suggests the extent to which Shyamalan expects an L.G.B.T.Q. human-rights attorney to turn the other cheek, forgive, defer, and, yes, even obey.)

The action is punctuated by brief flashbacks to Eric and Andrew, in earlier days, that thinly and superficially sketch their backstory. It’s a notable effort—that suggests how misguided and wrongheaded Shyamalan’s approach to his own subject is. By striking contrast, the backstory of the four bearers of doom is delivered verbally. They tell their own stories, in a couple of superficial sentences, that have this in common: each of them was possessed of visions of apocalyptic destruction—horrific visions that caused them to give up their livelihoods and, at great personal cost, find each other and then find the one and only family that would match their vision and could redeem the world.

That backstory is the unseen, undeveloped essence of “Knock at the Cabin,” the story of four visionaries whose possession leads to a cross-country odyssey and a death-besotted showdown. Whom do they leave behind and how, how do they find each other, and what do they do when they unite? How do they find the family with the power of deliverance? What do they talk about, how do they plan, what persuades them of the actuality of their powers? (Did they practice their apocalyptic skills on a small scale, by zapping weeds or making a pond overflow?) How do they distinguish (if at all) their own ability to make worldwide mischief and their vision of the mischief that’s made independent of them by a higher power? What’s their sense of the morality of their quest? Why don’t they decide instead to cure cancer or end hunger?

The story of religious experience, of prophetic visionaries who go to seemingly mad lengths to prove the authenticity of their wild imaginings—this is the premise of some great movies that already exist, such as Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “ Ordet ” and Michael Tolkin’s “ The Rapture. ” The theme is so rich that there’s room for more, and a director standing in the line of these and other filmmakers can use it to prove their own art of imagination, imaginative sympathy, and spiritual curiosity (as many filmmakers have done, for instance, with the character of Joan of Arc, ranging from Dreyer and Robert Bresson to Jacques Rivette and Bruno Dumont ).

Shyamalan betrays no such curiosity; he doesn’t appear to take such visionary experience seriously, but only its effect, as sheer power—essentially, as supernatural Hitlerians exterminating hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people by means of their own death cult. The drama that Shyamalan pursues is how reasonable and well-intentioned people can and should respond to possessed destroyers who hold them hostage. The movie’s answer is a sickening one.

“Knock at the Cabin” is an adaptation—or rather an extreme transformation—of the novel “ The Cabin at the End of the World ,” by Paul Tremblay. The setup and the characters are essentially the same, as are the themes of faith versus reason, resistance versus compromise. But the action itself, once the quartet penetrates the cabin, is drastically different. That’s not a reproach to Shyamalan (on the contrary, many of the best adaptations are similarly extreme); rather, it’s the specifics of his own vision that border on the outrageous. The script (which the director wrote with Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman) makes the foursome’s wrath, their willful bent toward destruction, all the more conspicuous. The film’s attitude toward resistance and moral responsibility, too, is altogether different from the book, in ways that conflate the intruders’ metaphysical and temporal power.

Whether it’s delusions of voter fraud and rigged elections, delusions of “ woke” bigotry , delusions of Pizzagate-like conspiracies , delusions about the “ deep state ,” or delusions about the tyrannies of vaccines, American politics and American lives are filled with faith-like visions of absolute certitude about absolute bullshit. These visions are backed with the power of guns and money . In one sense, “Knock at the Cabin” is a warning about the knock at the door that may come for any of us under a regime of religious fascism—perhaps for having the wrong books in the wrong places. In another, Shyamalan is pummelling his viewers’ mental immune system, softening America up to accept and comply with even the outrageous and devastating demands of the religious right, lest its operatives and acolytes do even worse things. It’s a movie that takes the fight out of its viewers even as it takes the books out of their hands; it’s a work of anti-resistance cinema. ♦

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Knock at the cabin ending & all twists explained.

M. Night Shyamalan's latest, Knock at the Cabin, is intense. There are questions answered and vague insinuations. We break down the film's ending.

The ending of Knock at the Cabin involves a self-sacrifice, with Eric choosing to die in order to save the world from the alleged apocalypse.
The movie explores the theme of love conquering all, highlighting the power of Eric and Andrew's strong and unwavering love for each other.
The nature of the apocalyptic events in Knock at the Cabin is left ambiguous, leaving the audience to interpret whether they were real or a timed coincidence.

2023's Knock at the Cabin is underpinned by a deep meaning, one that when explained in full reveals just how cerebral yet bleak the M. Night Shyamalan movie truly is. Knock at the Cabin has a seemingly straightforward plot, but there are twists and revelations abound in writer-director M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film. Co-written by Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman, Knock at the Cabin sees Shyamalan back once again telling a story of an apocalyptic situation. However, unlike Signs or The Happening, the characters in Knock at the Cabin know they have the power to stop the collapse of civilization — it's what they must do to achieve it that makes the movie so harrowing.

The Knock at the Cabin ending sees Leonard, Redmond, Sabrina, and Adriane dead, with Andrew still firm in his decision to save his family, regardless of the alleged apocalypse happening around them. While Andrew is not keen on killing Eric, Eric has made the decision for them — Eric will sacrifice himself to stop the apocalypse. Offscreen, a gunshot is heard, presumably with Andrew killing Eric. The planes stop falling from the sky and the lightning ceases. Shortly after, Knock at the Cabin's Andrew and Wen leave the cabin in Leonard’s car together. It's a bitter ending that's difficult to swallow, and there's clearly a much deeper meaning behind it and the nature of Andrew and Eric's choice.

Knock At The Cabin Secretly Does Have A Twist (Not What You’d Expect)

Why eric & andrew’s family was chosen to save the world.

Even Leonard and his three associates don’t really know the answer to why Eric, Andrew, and Wen are the family chosen to prevent the apocalypse in Knock at the Cabin . Leonard believes the Knock at the Cabin sacrifice was chosen because Eric and Andrew’s love for one another is pure. Compared to the darkness of the world and all the obstacles Eric and Andrew had to overcome to maintain their love, Leonard’s assertions seem accurate.

The group’s collective visions only pointed them toward a cabin, and they didn’t know Eric and Andrew would be the occupants. In all actuality, Knock at the Cabin explained it could’ve been anyone who was at the cabin. However, considering how hard Eric and Andrew fight for each other and their daughter, as well as how they never doubt their love for one another despite others (and societal standards) wanting to bring them down, it’s possible the depth of their love was enough to save the world.

The Knock at the Cabin ending explained how such a strong love is a beacon of hope amidst all the hate, destruction, and violence humanity has wrought. The strength of Eric and Andrew’s love is also a testament to love breaking boundaries and societal norms, thriving because two people saw the best in each other and simply wanted to build their relationship on trust, mutual respect, and love.

Knock At The Cabin’s Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse – What Each Represents & Their Fates Explained

Were the apocalyptic events real or a timed coincidence, the end of the world in knock at the cabin is ambiguous.

Knock at the Cabin explained that Leonard and his associates are convinced the apocalypse is real, but Andrew is in disbelief for the entirety of the movie. The events the characters witness on TV could have been predicted beforehand and then timed to Leonard’s team’s arrival at the cabin. After all, even Leonard admits that the end of the world has been coming before he and his crew began having visions. Viruses have killed many, and earthquakes have brought destruction. Leonard and his associates might have been following the patterns, predicted something big was going to happen for a short while, and that’s when they decided to strike.

However, there is also enough evidence in the Knock at the Cabin ending to explain the world was indeed saved because of Andrew and Eric’s decision. The planes stopped crashing to the ground abruptly, children stopped dying from the X9 virus, and the waters stopped rising following the tsunamis. The world was deeply affected by the calamities, but Eric’s death hints that Leonard’s crew was indeed telling the truth. It could have all been a coincidence, though, and Shyamalan’s film wanted the audience to question whether it was all real or not. The answer ultimately comes down to perception, and the proof is vague enough that it could go either way.

M. Night Shyamalan's Films Ranked From Absolute Worst To Best (Including Old)

Why eric decided to sacrifice himself instead of andrew, eric knew wen had a better future with andrew.

Eric was at peace by the end of Knock at the Cabin, which is why he decides to sacrifice himself instead of allowing Andrew to die. He knew Andrew had a lot of fight left in him. Andrew saw the world for what it was, but he still fought for people every day as a human rights lawyer because he knew there was something worth fighting for.

Andrew’s stubbornness would help him make his way through the world, his protective nature would help in raising the couple’s daughter, and his doubts about the apocalypse would make him curious enough to search for answers. Andrew is who the world needed — not Eric. Eric realized that and knew that Andrew’s passion and drive would allow him to go on regardless of his loss. It's different from the book where Andrew and Eric both survived.

8 Unanswered Questions After Knock At The Cabin

Why leonard & his crew refused to kill eric & andrew, the couple had to decide who died for themselves.

Leonard’s associates could only kill each other whenever Eric and Andrew refused to make a sacrifice. Only they could decide which of them would die. It’s possible Eric and Andrew loved each other so much that the decision to sacrifice either of them would be worthier because it was done freely and not by force. If any of Leonard’s crew had killed them, it would’ve ruined their entire mission. It would also have enraged the surviving spouse — the sacrifice had to be a decision made through love. Leonard couldn’t make that decision for them; it would have undermined Eric and Andrew’s connection, based on the Knock at the Cabin meaning.

Why Did Redmond Lie About His True Identity?

Redmond didn't want his past to exclude him from the mission.

Redmond’s real name was Rory O’Bannon, and Knock at the Cabin revealed he attacked Andrew at a bar years prior , which led Andrew to buy a gun for protection. Redmond’s presence was why Andrew thought his family was targeted. It’s possible Redmond lied about his true identity because he didn’t want Leonard, Sabrina, and Adriane to know he had a violent past, and that it was tied to Andrew’s. If Redmond revealed the truth, Leonard may not have wanted him on the mission, regardless of the shared visions. Perhaps Redmond believed stopping the apocalypse could redeem him, and revealing his true name would have been too dangerous.

Knock At The Cabin’s Apocalypse Phases & Judgments Explained

Did eric really see a figure (or was it just his concussion talking), it's left unclear if eric had a genuine vision or a hallucination.

As Leonard’s crew argues their case, Eric often seems in doubt. Eric later claims he sees a figure in the light behind Leonard, which convinces him there’s something to what Leonard and Sabrina are telling them. However, it could have easily been a trick of his mind. Eric’s concussion made him sensitive to light in the Knock at the Cabin plot, so he could’ve been seeing something that coincided with what he was being told.

The audience never saw the figure, and Eric wasn’t clear-headed at the time, so he can’t fully be trusted. Eric needed to see the figure, however, to make his final decision at the end of the horror film, or he might not have sacrificed himself.

How Leonard’s Crew Was Chosen For The Apocalypse Mission

The four horsemen in knock at the cabin shared a delusion.

Leonard’s team each represented the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse — at least according to Eric. Leonard was Guidance, Sabrina was Healing, Adriane was Nurture, and Redmond was Malice. It’s suggested they were all having a shared delusion, seeing the same visions and believing the same thing about the end of the world. It’s also possible they were chosen to stop the apocalypse because they would decide to do something about what they saw instead of ignoring it. Knock at the Cabin explained that Leonard and his crew could have also been looking for a way to help the world on a larger scale. In their professions, there was only so much they could do.

Redmond likely wanted redemption for the violence he’d committed in the past. Sabrina, as another example, was a nurse, but she could only save one person at a time. Saving the entire world at once — despite the fear they had — gave them some peace. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, in Christian scripture, are different from the ones presented in Knock at the Cabin . But they are still figures who are called upon and given authority. Like Eric and Andrew’s family, Knock at the Cabin’s home invaders could have been anybody. There could have been others who were having visions as well, but Leonard, Sabrina, and co. were the only ones to organize.

Knock At The Cabin Would've Been Way Better With The Book's Ending Twist

The real meaning of knock at the cabin’s ending, the movie is about genuine love conquering all.

Eric and Andrew’s love for each other is highlighted throughout the movie, and the Knock at the Cabin ending hints that it’s the power of love that will save the world from catastrophe. Eric and Andrew’s love was strong enough to withstand such a sacrifice, and the pair spent the majority of Shyamalan’s film fighting for each other and their daughter. Their love was offered as a stark contrast to Leonard, Redmond, Sabrina, and Adriane, who were often defined by their jobs or their hateful pasts. Perhaps the world needed to be reminded of love’s goodness, its purity, in the face of humanity’s violence and fear.

Knock at the Cabin also asserts the power of manipulation and coercion. The entire film is a power play. Leonard and his crew force Eric and Andrew to make a decision under pressure; they’re in a position of power and influence for the majority of Shyamalan’s film, and their way of handling things puts Eric and Andrew in a precarious situation where they will feel bad about any decision they make. The Knock at the Cabin meaning may have religious undertones and deals with doubt and questioning what’s real, but it’s very much about psychological and emotional manipulation and how that can factor into decision-making.

How M. Night Shyamalan Explains Knock At The Cabin's Meaning

Knock at the cabin needed altering to work as a movie.

M. Night Shyamalan made serious changes to the Knock at the Cabin ending. However, he felt that there was something that happened in Paul Tremblay's books that would have ruined it as a movie. " Well, there's an event that happens in the book (not in the movie), prior to that ending, that you can't recover from ," Shyamalan explained in an interview (via SF Gate ). According to the director, the book had built up a thought-provoking, unbelievable, and emotional experience for the readers. However, in one moment, " You did something that eradicates that ."

Shyamalan said that if he had done that in the movie, it would have trumped the unbelievable premise of the story, and that would have been " game over " for the movie as a story. This went against what Tremblay sought out with his novel. Both the author and filmmaker said the modems of storytelling are different, and you can't do the same thing in a movie that you can in a novel. Tremblay wanted to leave things open for ambiguity. The book's author actually said he felt Shyamalan's ending was darker than his. While Tremblay didn't force Eric or Andrew to make the ultimate choice, Shyamalan said it had to happen in his movie.

"I just fulfilled the premise. There was a journalist that interviewed me who said they read the book and then threw it across the room when they finished. And then another one said the same thing to me. They had those violent reactions because Sophie didn't make a choice."

Knock At The Cabin Continues M. Night Shyamalan's Great New Trend

How the knock at the cabin ending changed from the book, the director made deliberate changes to the source material.

The Knock at the Cabin ending was dark in both the movie and the book. However, the darkness was in different ways. In the book, neither Andrew nor Eric died, and neither had to make the choice. That is because it is Wen who died. The death of the young girl was accidental, as there was a fight for control of a gun, and when it went off, it was Wen who took the bullet and died. This was a greater tragedy than anything that happened in the movie because the parents had to weigh their choices and decisions during this traumatic event with the loss of their daughter, who they loved and swore to protect. It was a terrible moment in the book.

However, it also completely changed the course of the book from the Knock at the Cabin ending. According to Shyamalan, Knock at the Cabin explained that Andrew and Eric had to make a sacrifice to save the world and their daughter and one of them made that choice in the end. In the book, with their daughter dying in front of them, neither Andrew nor Eric was going to make that decision. This is important though, because it made the two stories about very different things. While the Knock at the Cabin ending in the movie was about sacrificing oneself for the greater good, the book was about true love surviving.

One problem with the movie is that it took an LGBTQ+ couple and made them the focus of the story only for them to have to end their relationship. This is not the story Paul Tremblay was telling in The Cabin at the End of the World . His theme was about love conquering all, and Andrew and Eric live, although heartbroken about Wen's death. It is Leonard who sacrifices himself, believing that is the last option when Andrew and Eric won't make the choice. Tremblay felt Eric dying destroyed the loving couple, making the Knock at the Cabin ending darker. He chose love, even if it meant the readers didn't know if it stopped the apocalypse at all.

Knock at the Cabin

M. Night Shyamalan's thriller, Knock at the Cabin, tells the story of a family who is approached by four strangers while staying in a remote cabin and given an impossible ultimatum. When Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge) take their daughter Wen (Kristen Cui) to a remote cabin for a family getaway, their stay is interrupted by the arrival of Leonard (Dave Bautista), Redmond (Rupert Grint), Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), and Adriane (Abby Quinn), who tell them that one of the family must be sacrificed in order to stop the impending apocalypse.

Knock At The Cabin Review

03 Feb 2023

Knock At The Cabin

After spectral therapists, agriculturally-inclined aliens and homicidal house plants, it’s quite refreshing to be confronted by an M. Night Shyamalan production in which the most ridiculous thing is the luxurious in-house library at an Airbnb. The film’s remote getaway (4.96 rating — Wi-Fi, free parking and end-of-days cultists included) is a bolt-hole to die for. It is, in fact, the perfect place for Eric ( Jonathan Groff ), Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and Wen (Kristen Cui) to spend some family time in the bosom of mother nature. It’s also, at first glance, an eye-rollingly tired setting for a bit of stabby-stabby horror. But Shyamalan is never one to do things by the book, and this eschatological thriller, like its setting, has more going on than a cursory glance at its listing would suggest.

Adapted from Paul Tremblay’s harrowing 2018 novel The Cabin At The End Of The World (with a script by Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman, re-written by Shyamalan), this is a tighter, simpler tale than many of the filmmaker’s original flights of fancy. It also wastes no time whatsoever. We’ve barely a moment to catch our breath before the family’s arboreal paradise is swiftly upended**,** an oppressive and sinister air descending after less than five minutes of screen time. Wen, gleefully catching grasshoppers in the woods, sees the hulking form of Leonard ( Dave Bautista ), trudging towards her in a crisp, short-sleeved missionary shirt and looking like a headliner for Mormon Summerslam. He is swiftly joined by companions Sabrina ( Nikki Amuka-Bird ), Redmond ( Rupert Grint ) and Adriane (Abby Quinn) — each wielding a medieval-looking instrument of torture — who inform the family they have a particularly difficult choice to make.

Bautista perfectly undercuts Leonard’s physical menace with an almost childlike tenderness that’s chilling in its affable restraint.

The secluded location and home invasion setup might be old as the hills but that’s the extent to which Knock At The Cabin agrees to play by standard rules. This isn’t a horror that trades in shock and gore, adopting instead a deceptively soft, almost gentle air as it lays out the boundless monstrosity of the family’s quandary. The bursts of savage violence, when they come, are potent but never lurid, relying on psychological wounds over splatter to make their point.

Paranoia, denial and twisted attempts at persuasion are the film’s primary tools, character and performance packing far more punch than the 9mm pistol locked out of reach in the boot of Andrew’s car. Groff and Aldridge’s rising panic is palpable, fuelling the suffocating tension, which mounts almost without respite over the course of 100 agonising minutes. Bautista is the standout, though, here gifted what seems like more lines than all his previous screen roles combined. He perfectly undercuts Leonard’s physical menace with an almost childlike tenderness that’s chilling in its affable restraint — all politeness and consideration, even when staving in skulls.

Book fans might be disappointed to see some of the source material’s edges sanded off (the title change a deliberate attempt to distance this adaptation), and not all of Shyamalan’s choices land as intended (an M. Night cameo involving an air fryer being particularly ill-judged), but this is a brutally stressful and effective thriller that doesn’t need a third-act rug-pull to leave the audience breathless.

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International Edition

The Strangers: Chapter 1 Footage Reaction: The Horror Franchise Goes To Incredibly Tense Places [CinemaCon 2024]

Director Bryan Bertino crafted a classic of the home invasion genre when "The Strangers" hit theaters in 2010. Now, Lionsgate has teamed up with director Renny Harlin ("Deep Blue Sea") to revamp the franchise with not just one movie, but an entire trilogy that will not just remake the first film, but further explore these mysterious killers across three full movies. The studio is deeply committed, as all three movies are already in the can. Hence, they brought some new footage from "The Strangers: Chapter 1" to this year's CinemaCon, and I was on hand to see what they had to show us. Buckle up, horror fans.

Harlin explained in an interview with /Film that he hopes to "answer some of those questions that I think all of us who enjoyed the original were left wondering" such as "Why? Who were the Strangers? Why did they do this? Is this completely really random, or is there something behind this or at least some reasons why somebody is a senseless, horrible serial killer?" Three movies will allow the filmmaker to explore that in far greater detail.

The first chapter centers on a young couple (Madelaine Petsch and Froy Gutierrez) whose car breaks down in a small town. They are forced to spend the night in a remote cabin where they are terrorized by three masked strangers who have no mercy and seemingly no motive. The trailer for "The Strangers: Chapter 1" arrived in March , teeing up this new take on Bertino's modern classic. The second installment is expected to arrive later this year, with the third one expected to follow shortly after that. All three movies are in the can and Lionsgate doesn't plan on making us wait forever to see what they've cooked up.

The Strangers return for a brand new trilogy

Lionsgate gave CinemaCon audiences a good look at the third film in "The Strangers" series, unveiling footage from "Chapter 1" that begins with Madelaine Petsch's Maya and Froy Gutierrez's Ryan walking into their new house. As /Film's Ryan Scott reports, everything seems quite pleasant at first, but this being "The Strangers: Chapter 1," things go awry pretty quickly.

The pair enter a diner and the eyes of the patrons shift to watch them as they walk in. Next, things take a real dark turn. Maya can be seen playing a piano while a bag-headed stranger is visible in a mirror behind her. A loud knock on the door disrupts her playing, which is quickly followed by an ax through the same door. Enter the titular strangers.

The insidious group barges into the house as Maya attempts to evade them, putting a nail through her hand as she attempts to remain quiet in her crawl space. It's all very "A Quiet Place" at this point, with a tense atmosphere that, while reminiscent of the inaugural film in the original series, feels quite different. There are plenty of explosions, car accidents, guns going off, and generally a ton of action. But most importantly, "The Strangers: Chapter 1" looks genuinely scary, which bodes well for the planned trilogy.

"The Strangers: Chapter 1" hits theaters on May 17, 2024.

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COMMENTS

Knock at the Cabin movie review (2023)
The script, co-written by Shyamalan, Steve Desmond, and Michael Sherman (adapting Paul Tremblay's book The Cabin at the End of the World), does better in making us worry for the targeted family.During this present-day stress, "Knock at the Cabin" cuts back and forth between the love story of Eric and Andrew, and their life with adopted daughter Wen.
Knock at the Cabin
Knock at the Cabin: Movie Clip - Andrew Refuses To Make A Sacrifice. CLIP 0:37 Knock at the Cabin: Movie Clip - Andrew Pulls A Gun On Leonard.
'Knock at the Cabin' opens a suspenseful door to what might ...
M. Night Shyamalan's forays into adapting other material came up limp with "Old" but fare considerably better with "Knock at the Cabin," a crisp and creepy thriller based on Paul ...
'Knock at the Cabin' Review: Who's There? The Apocalypse
Feb. 2, 2023. Knock at the Cabin. Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Horror, Mystery, Thriller. R. 1h 40m. Find Tickets. When you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site ...
Knock at the Cabin (2023)
Knock at the Cabin: Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. With Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Nikki Amuka-Bird. While vacationing, a girl and her parents are taken hostage by armed strangers who demand that the family make a choice to avert the apocalypse.
'Knock at the Cabin' Review: M. Night Shyamalan Delivers B-Movie ...
Opening in a quiet January still ruled by box office-conquering Avatar: The Way of Water, Knock at the Cabin is a small movie with some big ideas.It takes the hugest of dangers -- the end of the ...
Knock at the Cabin review
It is a supposed apocalyptic nightmare (adapted from the 2018 horror bestseller The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay) which turns out to be a silly shaggy dog story whose big reveal ...
'Knock at the Cabin' review: M. Night Shyamalan film gets apocalyptic
But when there's a "Knock at the Cabin," definitely answer the door. Based on Paul Tremblay's provocative 2018 horror novel "The Cabin at the End of the World," the pre-apocalyptic film ...
Knock at the Cabin
Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 24, 2023. Tina Kakadelis Beyond the Cinerama Dome. Knock at the Cabin is middle-of-the-road fare for Shyamalan. It doesn't reach his directorial heights ...
Knock at the Cabin review: underbaked thriller from M. Night Shyamalan
Knock at the Cabin review: M. Night Shyamalan goes dystopian in the woods. The man behind Old, Split, and The Sixth Sense returns with an intriguing but underbaked end-of-the-world thriller.
Knock at the Cabin Movie Review
Parents need to know that Knock at the Cabin is a horror-thriller from director M. Night Shyamalan about two dads (Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge) and their young daughter (Kristen Cui) who are asked by four intruders to execute one member of their family in order to save humanity.Based on a novel by Paul Tremblay, it's a suspenseful, economical, and even intimate film that wrestles with the ...
Review: 'Knock at the Cabin' twists the home invasion horror
The performances, all around, are convincing, and Shyamalan arrestingly stages the intense standoff as blood begins to spill and calamities, seen on television, mount. The tale, adapted from Paul G. Tremblay's 2018 novel "The Cabin at the End of the World" with a notable tweak to the ending, cleverly inverts the home invasion thriller.
Movie Review: 'Knock at the Cabin,' From M. Night Shyamalan
Knock at the Cabin is based on Paul Tremblay's 2018 novel, The Cabin at the End of the World, and the script follows the book pretty closely for the first two-thirds, before delivering a ...
Knock at the Cabin ending explained: How M. Night Shyamalan twist
Knock at the Cabin scares up $14.2 million, dethrones Avatar at the box office M. Night Shyamalan movies, ranked Knock at the Cabin 's Ben Aldridge defies old Hollywood fears after coming out: 'I ...
'Knock at the Cabin' Review: Dave Bautista Saves M. Night Shyamalan
In. Knock at the Cabin, a Terrific Dave Bautista Saves M. Night Shyamalan From Himself. Dave Bautista gives a career-best performance as a messenger of the apocalypse. M. Night Shyamalan movies ...
Knock at the Cabin Review: M. Night Shyamalan's Apocalypse ...
Knock at the Cabin Review: M. Night Shyamalan's Apocalypse Thriller Stumbles. By Julian Roman. Published Feb 1, 2023. A captive family must make a terrible choice or doom humanity in Knock at the ...
Knock at the Cabin
Knock at the Cabin is a 2023 American apocalyptic psychological horror film written, directed and produced by M. Night Shyamalan, who wrote the screenplay from an initial draft by Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman.It is based on the 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul G. Tremblay, the first adaptation of one of his works.The film stars Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben ...
Knock at the Cabin First Reviews: Dave Bautista Shines in M. Night
When M. Night Shymalan comes knocking, fans of twisty thrillers answer. The writer and director's latest, Knock at the Cabin, should be met by his usual crowd, given that its premise contains yet another suspenseful scenario.In the movie, four strangers show up at a family's cabin claiming that the end of the world is near.
"Knock at the Cabin," Reviewed: Be Nice to the QAnoners, or They'll Do
The movie's answer is a sickening one. "Knock at the Cabin" is an adaptation—or rather an extreme transformation—of the novel "The Cabin at the End of the World," by Paul Tremblay ...
Knock At The Cabin Ending & All Twists Explained
2023's Knock at the Cabin is underpinned by a deep meaning, one that when explained in full reveals just how cerebral yet bleak the M. Night Shyamalan movie truly is. Knock at the Cabin has a seemingly straightforward plot, but there are twists and revelations abound in writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's latest film. Co-written by Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman, Knock at the Cabin sees ...
Knock At The Cabin
Knock At The Cabin Review. Eric (Groff), Andrew (Aldridge) and their seven-year-old daughter Wen (Cui) decide to get away from it all at an idyllic cabin in the woods. Their bliss is cut short ...
Official Discussion
While vacationing, a girl and her parents are taken hostage by armed strangers who demand that the family make a choice to avert the apocalypse. Director: M. Night Shyamalan. Writers: M. Night Shyamalan, Steve Desmond, Michael Sherman. Cast: Dave Bautista as Leonard.
Knock at the Cabin film review
Before the screening at which I saw Knock at the Cabin, a trailer played celebrating the near quarter century of hits made by its director, M Night Shyamalan, since his 1999 breakthrough The Sixth ...
The Strangers: Chapter 1 Footage Reaction: The Horror Franchise ...
Maya can be seen playing a piano while a bag-headed stranger is visible in a mirror behind her. A loud knock on the door disrupts her playing, which is quickly followed by an ax through the same door.

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