{"id":4022,"date":"2024-09-14T15:41:31","date_gmt":"2024-09-14T15:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=4022"},"modified":"2024-10-14T13:51:36","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T17:51:36","slug":"knock-at-the-cabin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/09\/14\/knock-at-the-cabin\/","title":{"rendered":"Knock at the Cabin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Knock at the Cabin <\/strong>(2023)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 100 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence and language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: M. Night Shyamalan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: M. Night Shyamalan, Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Herdis Stefansdottir\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Jarin Blaschke\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 3, 2023 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Rupert Grint, Abby Quinn, Kristen Cui.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $35.4M (US)\/$54.8M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: * \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0Some knocks at the door are best left unanswered. Pesky neighbors, political pollsters and solicitors are at the top of my list. Knock at the Cabin<\/strong> is another time when it\u2019s best to pretend you\u2019re not home. The new horror-thriller from M. Night Shyamalan is yet another unfortunate miss from a filmmaker who showed great promise early on (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable) but lost his way with duds like The Happening, The Last Airbender (or as I like to call it, The Last Air Biscuit) and After Earth. He still hasn\u2019t regained his footing and his latest is definitely a step in the wrong direction. As has become his trademark move, he takes a rather interesting premise and drains all the life out of it. In turn, it sucks the life right out of the theater.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Based on the novel The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul G. Tremblay, Knock at the Cabin <\/strong>takes place almost entirely in the living room of a remote cabin in Burlington County, NJ where a family of three is being detained by four strangers warning of imminent doom unless they make the difficult choice of sacrificing one of their own to save the world.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It was supposed to be a fun, relaxing vacation for happy couple Eric (Groff, The Matrix Resurrections) and Andrew (Aldridge, Spoiler Alert) with their adopted daughter Wen (Cui). That is, until the arrival of four intruders bearing makeshift weapons. Their leader Leonard (Bautista, Guardians of the Galaxy) explains that he and his companions Sabrina (Bird, Old), Adriane (Quinn, Landline) and Redmond (Grint of the Harry Potter films) need their help in stopping the end of the world. They claim to have been brought together by some unknown force, the same one that led them to Eric, Andrew and Wen. Tied to chairs and cut off from the outside world, they\u2019re told the only way to stop the impending Apocalypse is to willingly kill one of their own. It\u2019s a choice they have to make themselves. For every refusal on their part, the rest of the world will pay the price be it a natural disaster or deadly virus. News reports appear to confirm what they\u2019re saying. Could this be real or is it some shared psychosis?<\/p>\n

\u00a0There was a time when I thought Shyamalan deserved to be mentioned in the same breath as Spielberg and Cameron. He came out of the gate strong with The Sixth Sense, not his first movie but the one that first brought the filmmaker to the attention of the moviegoing public. It was a slow-burn thriller and Shyamalan made it work. How? He made the viewer\u2019s patience pay off with one of the greatest final revelations ever. It all but demanded you go back for a second viewing. Since then, audiences have come to expect it every time from Shyamalan. This time, there is no payoff. The supposed shock ending of Knock at the Cabin<\/strong> isn\u2019t a shock at all. The lead-up to it isn\u2019t much better. It starts off okay with an unsettling premise and slowly goes nowhere. By the time we find out what\u2019s really what, our interest has ebbed to the point of indifference.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Due to the recent controversy over 12YO Ryan Kiera Armstrong\u2019s Razzie nomination for Worst Actress (which has since been rescinded), I\u2019m reluctant to criticize 9YO newcomer Cui too harshly. In her first major acting credit, she doesn\u2019t make much of an impression. She spends most of the movie with a blank expression on her face. It\u2019s not a great performance; however, the fault isn\u2019t entirely hers. The screenplay by Shyamalan, Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman lets her down big time by not developing her character too far beyond a superficial level. What do we really know about Wen? She\u2019s an Asian adoptee born with a cleft palate (hence the scar above her lip). She likes learning and watching anime (she mentions Kiki\u2019s Delivery Service by name). She loves her two dads. That\u2019s it, more or less. Other than that, we don\u2019t get much of a read on this kid. In Cui\u2019s defense, she\u2019s young and has lots of time to hone her craft if she chooses to pursue an acting career.<\/p>\n

\u00a0If I\u2019m being honest, the acting isn\u2019t the worst thing in Knock at the Cabin<\/strong>. None of it is Oscar-level stuff, but I doubt we\u2019ll see any of the players on next year\u2019s list of Razzie nominees either. I find it difficult to believe Bautista\u2019s hulking, tattooed character is a second grade teacher, but if the Terminator can pass as a kindergarten teacher, why not Drax the Destroyer? Bautista reveals a gentler, softer-spoken side of himself here. He\u2019s only menacing in size and appearance. It\u2019s an interesting performance. Groff and Aldridge, both gay in real life, make a convincing couple even if their characters aren\u2019t particularly interesting. Their arcs are extremely predictable with one of them (literally) seeing the light while the other continues to fight.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In simple terms, Knock at the Cabin<\/strong> is boring. Although Shyamalan keeps it relatively brief at 100 minutes (as opposed to the glut of movies with two hour-plus run times), it\u2019s still a chore to sit through. I wasn\u2019t interested in the characters or their dilemmas. Also, I knew exactly where it was headed. It doesn\u2019t take a genius to know what the four strangers represent. If you know your Bible, the Book of Revelations in particular, you know what I\u2019m talking about. There aren\u2019t any surprises in Knock at the Cabin<\/strong> but one. It\u2019s bad. But is that really a surprise considering Shyamalan\u2019s track record as of late?\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Knock at the Cabin (2023)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 100 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence and language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: M. Night Shyamalan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: M. Night Shyamalan, Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Herdis Stefansdottir\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Jarin Blaschke\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 3, 2023 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Rupert Grint, Abby Quinn, Kristen Cui.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5029,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Knock-at-the-Cabin-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4022"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5030,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4022\/revisions\/5030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}