M. Night Shyamalan Is #1 On Streaming With A Thriller That Leaves You Guessing Until The Last Minute
M. Night Shyamalan’s creepy apocalyptic thriller Knock at the Cabin is currently knocking out the competition with its effective blend of Old Testament wrath and nail-biting tension. According to FlixPatrol the movie has been #1 on Amazon Prime for over a week and shows no signs of stopping.
If you’re a fan of M. Night Shyamalan or just well-constructed thrillers that leave you guessing until the last minute, you owe it to yourself to check out Knock at the Cabin.
Knock at the Cabin has been Amazon Prime’s most streamed movie for over a week.
The movie stars Dave Bautista as the reluctant leader of a group of four strangers who believe they are tasked with preventing the apocalypse. The rest of the group, made up of Abby Quinn, Hogwarts alum Rupert Grint, and Nikki Amuka-Bird, follow Bautista’s Leonard to a remote cabin where married couple Eric (Hamilton’s Jonathon Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge) are vacationing with their adopted daughter Wen (played by newcomer Kristen Cui in her feature film debut).
The group of strangers explains to Eric and Andrew that they’ve all been having visions of the end of the world, and the only way to stop it from happening is for either of the men or their daughter to sacrifice themself to save humanity from ultimate destruction.
Knock at the Cabin is based on a 2018 novel, The Cabin at the End of the World, by author Paul Tremblay.
What follows is one of M. Night Shyamalan’s tightest thrillers. Knock at the Cabin doesn’t tell the viewer how to interpret what’s going on but instead leaves it up to them to decide if the would-be profits are really on a divine mission or if perhaps they’re motivated by something else entirely.
Knock at the Cabin is based on a 2018 novel, The Cabin at the End of the World, by author Paul Tremblay. The book was optioned as a film before it was even published, putting it in the same league as The Godfather, 2001: A Space Oddity, and the Scott Pilgrim comic series, which took it to another level by having its final volume come out after the movie based on it.
Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman wrote the initial draft of the Knock at the Cabin screenplay before M. Night Shyamalan came on board and wrote his own draft.
M. Night Shyamalan cast Dave Bautista in the role of Leonard after initially thinking it would be impossible to find a “giant” who could show emotion and perform long monologues. It wasn’t until the director remembered Bautista’s role in Blade Runner 2049 that he considered the ex-wrestler for the role. The rest of the casting was completed by the time principal photography began in Burlington County, New Jersey on April 19, 2022.
Knock at the Cabin was filmed using lenses from the 1990s to achieve the “old-school thriller” vibe M. Night Shyamalan was going for. The director ultimately chose to deviate from the source material in one crucial place: the end. The film version of The Cabin at the End of the World has a slightly lighter and open-ended finale than the original novel.
M. Night Shyamalan cast Dave Bautista in the role of Leonard after initially thinking it would be impossible to find a “giant” who could show emotion and perform long monologues.
Universal Pictures released the film on February 3, 2023. The film was moved from its original release date of February 17 to avoid competition with Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Given how big of a disappointment Ant-Man 3 ended up being for Disney, M. Night Shyamalan probably didn’t have to bother switching the dates after all.
Knock at the Cabin also has the distinction of being Shyamalan’s second movie to receive an R-rating from the MPAA despite the director largely working in the thriller/horror genre.
The movie grossed $52 million globally during its theatrical run against a reported budget of $20 million. After factoring in promotion and other post-production costs, it’s safe to say that Knock at the Cabin made a profit but just barely.
The movie fared slightly better critically, with a certified fresh 67 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The review aggregate site describes the critical consensus for Knock as “often less than scary,” but also “a thought-provoking chiller,” and “upper-tier Shyamalan.”
Since the film’s release to streaming earlier this year, it’s been slowly building the following that it failed to capture at the movies. If you’ve ever wanted to watch a suspenseful thriller with Book of Revelation vibes starring Ron Weasley and Drax the Destroyer laying the smackdown on King George, you can’t do much better than M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin. Knock at the Cabin is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
