Knock at the Cabin is completely off the typical M Night Shyamalan track of chills and thrills. Four strangers who share a vision about the apocalypse and how to stop it. That involves making a family of two parents and a kid make an incredibly tough decision of sacrifice, or the strangers must make sacrifices of their own. At the core of it the question, what would you be willing to do to save the world?
In a film that felt a little like a home invasion movie at first, there was an extreme lacking of twists. While there were some thrills of violence present, there were no scares, jumps not chills in this one.
While the script lends some suspicion to throw an alternative belief as to what was going on in the story, the end it was headed towards was blatantly obvious.
I believe that there was some social commentary, deliberate or not, in the way of targeting gays by those homophobic mentality, as well as a “see, the media isn’t so crazy as we think,” regarding how the parents felt about the doomsday narrative that the strangers were laying out.
All of that said, The writer in me enjoys well written stories and this was certainly well written. The acting was superb by every cast member, with Dave Bautista stealing the show.
Not the normal M Night Shyamalan mail biter, but certainly worth a watch.
James Baxter 