Knock at the Cabin (2023)

I know, as a general rule, that novels tend to be better than the movies based on them. Paul Tremblay has a good reputation as a horror novelist and this movie is based on his Cabin at the End of the World, which I haven’t read. But I thought the premise was notably weak here. A gay couple, Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge), is vacationing at a remote cabin with their adopted Chinese daughter Wen (Kristen Cui). It’s a little confusing—the place is full of books and furniture and a fully equipped kitchen. I thought they might be living there but that didn’t make much sense either. Anyway, they are approached by four mysterious strangers who bang on the door of the cabin, force entry, and explain the family must make a sacrifice and kill a member of their family—their choice. The home invaders carry very terrible-looking weapons. The leader is a soft-spoken man named Leonard, who says he’s a second-grade teacher in Iowa. He’s played by Dave Bautista of Guardians of the Galaxy with infinite calm and patience and his menacing size. If the victims don’t commit this sacrifice, he explains, the world will end in various ways with a biblical tinge—flood, plague, etc. There is only limited time. If the terrorized family refuses to cooperate, one of the home invaders will be killed by the others in gruesome fashion, one at a time, the family forced to witness. No, it doesn’t make much sense and the strangers, not surprisingly, are not persuasive, even when they turn on the TV to news reports of various disasters. Some of these are great—a tidal wave coming ashore at Cannon Beach in Oregon, planes failing in flight and falling out of the sky. Those falling planes correspond to a recurring nightmare I used to have, so they worked very well on me. But more often I was frustrated with the proceedings here, which of course is not atypical for a movie by director and cowriter M. Night Shyamalan. The invaders can’t convince the family to commit the sacrifice because their arguments are so weak. They are based on visions they’ve had, which means it’s reasonable to think they are more likely mentally ill than that they have personal knowledge of God’s retribution, or whatever this is. Still, Knock at the Cabin got me in its grip and didn’t let go. Not making sense only made it more terrifying. Among other things by now we’re trained to try to out-think Shyamalan on the plot twists. It’s distracting, but I think he might be making that work for him now. Knock at the Cabin is perhaps less a horror picture than an unnerving suspense thriller, but any time you’ve got a home invasion you’re in the vicinity of horror. While none of it particularly adds up, I admit I spent most of my time watching from the edge of my seat.