Knock at the Cabin: Whoever Wins, They Choose
In one of the many tense sequences in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, a young woman implores a housemate to shut the door before a malevolent force breaks through: “Don’t let them in!” That same pleading desperation permeates the opening scenes of Knock at the Cabin, Shyamalan’s new thriller, which finds a vacationing family—an adorable seven-year-old named Wen (Kristen Cui) and her two fathers, Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Spoiler Alert’s Ben Aldridge)—under sudden assault from a quartet of armed, menacing invaders. But where The Village cultivated a tone of suffocating suspense (what will happen?), the mood here is instead one of clammy inevitability. The trespassers break through the cabin’s fortifications with minimal resistance, quickly tying up our heroes and establishing that the movie will not unfold as a typical home-invasion yarn. Sure, you may briefly wonder whether the victims will use their collective guile to escape (did someone just mention Chekhov’s gun?), but mostly you ponder why the intruders are there and—once you learn that answer—whether there is any legitimacy to their stated purpose.
Ever the economical storyteller, Shyamalan answers the first of those questions in a matter of minutes. (Even he isn’t as efficient as the film’s trailer, which naturally divulges the entire plot.) The housebreakers—led by gentle-giant Leonard (a very fine Dave Bautista), who’s joined by the fretful Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), the timid Adriane (Abby Quinn), and the surly Redmond (Rupert Grint, currently starring on the Shyamalan-produced Servant)—behave according to a peculiar, seemingly contradictory code. On the one hand, they are obviously threatening, with their crude weapons (mallets, picks) and their grim determination. Yet despite their forcible entry and disturbing fervor, they insist—with apparent honesty—that they aren’t there to hurt anyone. Rather, they solemnly inform their captives that unless the family sacrifices one of its own, the world will end. And to prove the truth of their purported prophecy, they will ritualistically kill one of their own until the prisoners—watching helplessly, and goosed by ensuing television reports of global bedlam—resolve to make an impossible choice. Read More
