Knock At The Cabin Reviews Are In. Has M. Night Shyamalan Broken His Streak?
The reviews for Knock at the Cabin are mostly favorable as M. Night Shyamalan's new movie sees its opening weekend.
After years of lackluster films, it would seem that M. Night Shyamalan is starting to regain his footing. A part of that may be experience from executive producing and directing the acclaimed Apple+ series Servant, but the way critics and audiences are responding to Knock at the Cabin, his latest big-screen endeavor, is also indicative that the director may be returning to form. Reviews of the movie are in after its release on Friday and they seem mostly favorable.
The movie is about married couple Eric and Andrew and their adopted daughter Wen, who are on vacation at the eponymous cabin when it is approached by four armed strangers with a cruel demand. The four strangers have never met before assembling outside the cabin, and none of them want to hurt the family, but they have had visions of the end of the world, which can only be prevented if the family can decide between them which one of them dies and makes the sacrifice themselves. Trapped together inside the isolated cabin, the couple is forced to consider their impact on events in the larger world.
Knock at the Cabin stars Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Dave Bautista, Rupert Grint, Abby Quinn, Niki Amuka-Bird, and Kristen Cui as Wen. The movie is based on the Paul Tremblay novel The Cabin at the End of the World and was adapted for the screen by M. Night Shyamalan, Steve Desmond, and Michael Sherman. To date, it has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 68 and a Metacritic score of 63.
The majority of reviews for the Knock at the Cabin are very good, praising particularly the earnest performance of Dave Bautista as Leonard, the leader of the four intruders, and Rupert Grint, who C-Net billed as “superb” in his performance as Redmond, a “twitchy redneck” who is another of the four intruders. The movie’s claustrophobic setting in contrast to the rest of the world also supplied enough tension and suspense to satisfy critics. Acclaim was also given to the backstory provided about Eric and Andrew’s relationship and marriage, especially as these details are provided within the context of the titular cabin.
However, just enough critics found fault with the movie to indicate M. Night Shyamalan has some work to do if he wants to regain the glory of his The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable days. RogerEbert.com wasn’t as enthusiastic about the flashbacks to Andrew and Eric’s past, acknowledging that the story had merit but stating, “Knock at the Cabin creates one anticlimax after another.” The review claims that Shyamalan didn’t go far enough, dampening the threat of imminent violence with the cutaway scenes.
Despite any negative response, audiences seem to enjoy Knock at the Cabin, rating it 64 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences also liked the follow-ups to Unbreakable, 2016’s Split and 2019’s Glass, but other than those, the last M. Night Shyamalan movie to gain any traction with viewers and critics was Signs in 2002. It would seem that the director’s latest release has indeed broken his slump and reinforced his reputation.
Knock at the Cabin is currently in theaters.
