There are some filmmakers that have such unsteady careers, you can almost visualize their work as a series of peaks and valleys, with the shift in quality sometimes signalling a decline in their dedication to their work, or simply having lost the skill needed to be an effective filmmaker. The best one of these people can hope for is a career revival, usually driven by a critical reappraisal, which happens for those who find their work revisited decades after their death or retirement (as is the case with directors like Frank Perry or Mark Rydell), or the more rare but still extant situation where they make one film that is described with the powerful description of “a return to form”, which allows every film that is made in the aftermath automatically more well-received. M. Night Shyamalan has been riding a wave of critical acclaim in the last decades, with efforts like The Visit and Split repositioning him as one of the masters of horror cinema, many not only remembering the reasons behind his instant ascension to the status of a wunderkind after he made The Sixth Sense, but also forgiving some of his weaker efforts, with steadily growing revivals in popularity of films like The Village and The Lady in the Water, who some have deemed secretly good films that were just misunderstood at the time. However, the goodwill of making one great film cannot last indefinitely, and after a while a director needs to prove that they deserve this recent revival in popularity. To his credit, Shyamalan has been trying to do solid work, taking on a wide range of different subjects, whether adapting the well-received source material, or revisiting his own prior films and expanding on the worlds he created over a decade previously. His most recent offering comes in the form of Knock at the Cabin, in which he is adapting the novel The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul G. Tremblay, telling the story of a small family who are confronted with a terrifying choice when their holiday is interrupted by the arrival of some unwanted visitors, who claim to be intent on saving the world through enacting a plan

As a species, we have grown to have a strange relationship with the concept of the apocalypse – the idea of our world ending, whether through divine retribution as foretold in ancient religious texts, or through environmental or human-made or supernatural forces, we have always been both curious and fearful about the inevitability of the world we call our own being destroyed in some way or another. It is also an almost universal experience to have entertained what we would do in the scenario that the apocalypse descends on us, with the usual sentiment being to retreat to the safest and most remote location, from which we will hopefully be spared, if only to hide from whatever forces are bringing an end to the world. Knock at the Cabin uses this as the foundation, but poses it as a very different question – what if, instead of fleeing to a remote cabin far from the rest of civilization to wait out the end of the world, we ourselves can dictate the direction in which our planet goes from this very location? It’s the premise of the original novel, and the concept that drives this film, the primary motivation of which is to be an introspective and complex examination of the human psychology when presented with a horrifying choice. Unfortunately, Shyamalan doesn’t execute it quite well enough – a lot of Knock at the Cabin plays like one of those thought-provoking, hypothetical psychology questions that we find in day-to-day life, which is not inherently a negative aspect (since those questions lead to many interesting conversations around morality and ethics, and the psychology that goes into very challenging scenarios), but isn’t given the time and attention it deserves, rarely going anywhere valuable, and making us wonder whether he was the right person to bring this story to the screen, or whether this text may have been better suited for someone who wasn’t going to aim for the mainstream, but rather plumb the emotional depths of Tremblay’s novel, finding the nuance in the small details, rather than shoehorning some populist fare into a story that was not nearly as suited for this style of filmmaking as we may expect.

Knock at the Cabin is undeniably a well-made film, and Shyamalan has always excelled at cultivating scenarios that are truly unsettling and play on our deepest fears. One of the most feared themes is that of home invasion, many of us terrified of the prospect of unwanted visitors entering our homes, since they are not only impeding in our domestic space, but they very rarely (if ever) have good intentions for their presence. This film effectively uses this theme in its first act, which is coincidentally the strongest part of the film, and the concept of complete isolation is also interwoven into the narrative, creating a sinister sense of dread and despair, from which there is rarely any escape. He draws on these fears quite effectively – but considering horror depends on the element of surprise, but the time the premise is set in motion, we find that Shyamalan doesn’t quite know what to do with it. It is one of the few films he made that doesn’t have a twist (which isn’t mandatory, but when you have built your career on unexpected plot progression, it seems disappointing to see something so straightforward – and we can’t justify this by saying that he was adhering to the original text, since he doesn’t have a problem changing the ending to make it more palatable (another reason the novel needed a more daring hand at the helm), and the film ultimately peaks far too early on, right at the start of the second act, with roughly an hour of misplaced tension that ultimately leads to an underwhelming conclusion that draws a flaccid comparison between these unwelcome visitors and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and just doesn’t have much merit in terms of being a critically-thinking work. It does have a few interesting ideas, but these ultimately don’t service the latter portions of the film, which seem to be leading to some grand revelation, but ultimately end with a whimper rather than a bang, despite all the potential scenarios that could have played out with such promising material.

One aspect that Shyamalan doesn’t fumble when putting this film together are the performance. This is a horror film that takes place in a single location, and is based on defining each of these characters as individuals, each one with their own distinct identity, which is vitally important to the way this film functions. The cast is mostly very good – we don’t see much of Rupert Grint, Nikki Amuka-Bird or Abby Quinn, but the time they are on screen is still very good. The two protagonists, as played by Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge are quite good – and kudos to Shymalan for casting two openly gay actors in these roles, and while he may sometimes struggle with narrative consistency, but he is still a very progressive director – however recent discourse around Knock at the Cabin has shown that a large portion of the conservative community has rallied around it as an example of anti-queer narratives, which is the complete antithesis of what was originally intended. However, the most impactful performances come from two actors who could not be more diametrically opposed in terms of appearance and persona – Dave Bautista (who has made a concerted effort to choose roles that are interesting and worthy of his time, not just depending on parts that play on his hulking persona, making him one of the very few wrestlers-turned-actors that actually has shown strong acting skills) and Kristen Cui are the most unforgettable parts of the story. Bautista’s role in particular is fascinating – the very definition of a gentle giant, he navigates the film as someone whose intentions are ambigious, and whose entire existence is a mystery. He is neither hero nor villain (in fact, the very nature of the story prevents anyone from being conveyed as truly evil), while Cui is the heart of the film, the only genuinely good character, and the only one who seems to never fall into the panic that quickly descends over the film, likely a result of the threat of the apocalypse failing to register as a result of her youthful, idealistic innocence. Knock at the Cabin has a cast that is undeniably very strong, which makes us wish the material was slightly stronger, or at least Shyamalan’s execution of the source material.

While Knock at the Cabin may continue Shyamalan’s recent streak of choosing stories with a lot of potential, and then causing many of the nuances to get lost in the process of adapting them fit into his style (which include changing the ending entirely, as is the case here), it is difficult to not admire the sheer gall with which he directs his material. He is not the most consistent filmmaker, but he is audacious enough to take some bold swings, and has the humility to not marinade on the failures for too long, instead pursuing the next project, which is always interesting in concept, but doesn’t always manifest that same potential when it comes to executing these ideas. Knock at the Cabin is not a disaster by any means, and it is certainly masterful if we take into account of the notorious films that Shymalan directed over the years. However, the problem here is that this film is slightly too safe – it isn’t audacious enough to take risks, and rather than give into the temptation to go bold with what is already quite a peculiar story, Shyamalan stays too close to conventions, which makes this a relatively dull affair, nothing particularly poor (and it is visually quite striking – he is a great visual stylist), but also not a film that tends to make much of an impact. Considering he has made a concerted effort to move away from those over-the-top horror and science fiction films that depend more on seeing how far the audience will be able to invest in a story before being confronted by a strange twist, it seems like we currently are working with a more mature, focused director, and one that clearly has a lot of talent (as we’ve seen in the past), but who keeps searching for the one film that will return him to the astronomical acclaim of The Sixth Sense, which is starting to look less like the start of a rich, impactful career, and more like lightning in a bottle. However, if he continues to dedicate himself to making well-directed, interesting films that have strong concepts at their heart, it’s difficult to imagine that he won’t have another major success – it just unfortunately didn’t come in the form of Knock at the Cabin, which is a passable but otherwise forgettable entry into the over-saturated horror genre.