Knock at the Cabin? Don't answer
One great performance and several good ones can't save the mediocre writing of this psychological horror
Besides being a film that I’m trying to derive greater meaning from in order to give its director grace, Knock at the Cabin is a movie about a gay couple and their adopted Asian daughter going to a lakeside cabin in the woods. There, a group of four people (Dave Bautista as second-grade teacher/basketball coach Leonard, Rupert Grint as ex-con gas company worker Redmond, Nikki Amuka-Bird as nurse Sabrina, and Abby Quinn as line-cook Adriane) cursed with the gift of prophecy confine the young family to their lodging, making an impossible bargain – one of you three must die, you three must pick, or else the world will end. Eric (Jonathan Groff), briefly concussed, is most open to the miniature death cult’s pitch. The angrier Andrew (Ben Aldridge) is more skeptical and believes they’re being targeted for their sexuality by Christian bigots – he starts at an eleven and stays there, and the flashbacks to show how he becomes who he is are sympathetic and endearing. The tiny Wen (Kristen Cui) is supposed to have a voice in the matter according to the premise but of course does not because she’s a child; she very briefly escapes and is brought back by group spokesperson Leonard who she met in the intro, as showcased in the trailer, before the outset of things. Each member of the miniature death cult, successively, is killed by the rest of the group, prompting the next disaster which marks the end of days.
This is, almost without a doubt, Dave Bautista’s best work to date. When I say ‘I don’t like this very much’ or ‘this is not very good’ or, as I wrote in my notes in the theater, ‘this movie is dumb,’ this is not a reflection on Leonard or on Bautista. He’s carrying this film across his broad, strapping shoulders for two-thirds or three-quarters of the runtime. He’s arresting, he commands space, he dictates conversation. He’s *so* good. Bautista is absolutely the only reason I would recommend this film, unless you’re dying for 5-10 minutes of Rupert Grint doing a serviceable Medford, Massachusetts accent. My favorite work of his is probably still Sick Note, but he’s effective enough here that I almost felt cheated when he left. Jonathan Groff is also solid, though one problem I had with the movie is how relatively little he and Aldridge seem affected by the traumatic violence unfolding in front of them – maybe that’s part of the performance, the relative calm and relative anger as opposed to being shocked and shaken, but to me it feels like a directorial failure.
Knock at the Cabin does not work for me, does not succeed at anything besides showcasing that one actor deserves more big, serious roles. It’s not terribly directed in that the performances mostly work in concert, the camera work is very good, and the performances themselves are earnest, but the dialogue from the most important characters is so hokey it undercuts those performances near to the point of sinking them. As a picture that flirts with being horror, it has the wherewithal to not overstay its welcome. Of course, its conclusion is too tidy, and nearly unearned. It’s an apocalyptic parable about the need for humanity to sacrifice some of our joys to prevent the end of all life, in my most generous reading. But I find this metaphor falls apart, is hardly compelling, specifically because (1) of the general thrust of the dialogue and plot and (2) because of the incomplete analogy that the problem is too much joy in our lives. Too much pleasure? Sure. Too indulgent with our vices? Perhaps. Too much desire and insatiable appetites, even. But love and our connection with one another? That’s something we’re lacking, the development of which might lead to better, more sustainable models of living if we could extend them beyond the interpersonal to the broadly social. And if it’s instead supposed to be a conversation about the depraved and dramatic things faith will lead people to do, there’s a problem when those faithful are proven right in their conviction.
The plot is by no means completely Swiss cheese, but there’s a quote at the end about the essential components of humanity that seems to come from nowhere and feels like the piecing-together of a puzzle that was never set up – clumsily naming and needlessly explaining an experience the audience has already had. There’s no ‘a-ha’ moment, just a ‘yea, doy’. The film’s plot is merely problematized by the fact that it’s essentially a one-location play with cutaways to visually captivating apocalyptic happenings by way of news reports. That is to say that the moments within the cabin need to really land, and in a movie about conversations, the conversations must be worth listening to and experiencing. Here they are a mixed bag, not because of the actors, but because of the writing. Shyamalan, perceived by many as using twists and reveals as a crutch because of his early work (especially The Sixth Sense, his most well-regarded film) doesn’t do that so much here. The only reveal is that the cultists (is four enough for a cult or is it just a gang?) are telling the truth; this is a letdown of a reveal, though, because the confirmation by neutral third parties happens after repeated confirmations (the aforementioned news reports).
Knock at the Cabin is just a sort of underwhelming film that plays with faith, one of Shyamalan’s favorite themes. Seeing Grint here makes me somewhat curious about Servant, but Shyamalan has done noting since I was a toddler to earn my benefit of the doubt. The only special thing about this film is Bautista continuing to show that he’s the best wrestler-turned-actor working, if not ever. Perhaps what draws people to see Shyamalan’s films is that he writes, directs, and produces most of his films by himself – that’s impressive on its own, and I would suggest he let another screenwriter take a pass at the work, but he’s got two others involved here and I’m not sure how much it helped. The film does have one thing going for it, besides Bautista, I suppose: you don’t have to see Cabin in the Woods or Knocked Up to understand it.