Knock At The Cabin Review: Offers little more than a mildly interesting premise

M Night Shyamalan is a master at extracting the maximum tension out of a scene. And he does so without relying on large bombastic moments. You start with a sufficiently creepy setup, like a small girl playing alone in the woods and being approached by a stranger. As the characters interact we sense something is about to go wrong. The scene unravels ever so slowly while most of the tension is wrought out of our minds calculating the different dark ways in which this scene could end. 

Director: M Night Shyamalan
Cast: Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Kristen Cui

Knock at the cabin is peppered with such signature M Night Shyamalan tension elevation. These moments are often punctuated by extreme close-ups of faces, meant to give us the same sense of fear, dread, and foreboding felt by the characters on screen. While we get the point of these extreme close-ups, they could be overbearing and downright distracting after their repeated usage. However, that by no means diminishes the creative way in which the visuals are designed to take us through the story. From the way limited space is used, to the smooth focus transitions that gently guide our attention from one character to another, the film extracts the best out of its compactly designed visual language.

The antagonists being reluctant killers, fuelled only by unrelenting conviction in what they believe in is an interesting idea to power a thriller. But ideas—that could only be described as mildly interesting—cannot make for a compelling story. There is nothing much that happens in terms of character evolution, nor do we get to explore these characters and how their minds work, except for when their past is explored, which again is only to serve the central twist of the film or to give us more exposition. 

As someone with an imposing figure, who also has to convince his likely victims that his intentions are well-placed and that he is, in fact, a mild-mannered, functional member of society, Dave Bautista excels in his role as a walking contradiction. His striking physicality works in tandem with his acting skills to keep us guessing his true intentions. Another standout performance comes from the nine-year-old Kristen Cui who effortlessly passes on her anxiety to the audience. But as stated earlier, due to the lack of character progression, there is not much in terms of scope for actors to exhibit their range. 

The final moments of the film betray a sense of trepidation to explore the true depths of the story’s conclusion probabilities. Right at the moment when you feel like the tension is about to kick several notches above, the film subverts your expectations by not really subverting anything. While that makes for an entertaining idea, when stretched as a film, it feels like they used a candle flame to cook a feast. It truly feels like the end of times when you have to say that the climax of an M Night Shyamalan film could have benefited from pushing the boundaries.