My Review of Knock At The Cabin (2023)

 

Written by M. Night Shyamalan And Steve Desmond And Michael Sherman

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

Leonard (to Andrew/Eric): "It's time for the next sacrifice. Are you willing to make a choice?"

As a gay guy who loves the horror genre, the one thing I've wanted was more was to have prominent LGBT characters front and centre with LGBT actors in the roles while at the same time giving us a quality movie. With this entry from M. Night Shyamalan, I more or less got that wish here.

Focusing on a gay couple named Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and Eric (Jonathan Groff), this apocalyptic themed outing based on Paul Tremblay's book, The Cabin At The End OF The World saw the pair taking a vacation in in the titular cabin with their eight old year daughter, Wen (Kristen Cui), only to find that a break away from their city lives attracted some very unwanted visitors too.

The visitors being mild mannered grade school teacher, Leonard (Dave Bautista), nurse Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), single mother and line cook, Adriane (Abby Quinn) and gas company man, Raymond (Rupert Grint). The foursome are convinced that the world will end and the only way to save will be for Andrew, Eric and Wen to make a horrible sacrifice.

Needless to say, both Andrew and Eric (who spend a fair chunk of the movie tied up) have somewhat different thoughts about the pickle they've been placed in. Andrew's completely skeptical of Leonard's doom mongering prophecy and believed him to be a charlatan and challenged Leonard at every turn. This included Andrew getting free and coming close to nearly killing Leonard before the latter took himself out of the equation, so to speak.

Then there was Eric. Unlike Andrew, Eric did believe in Leonard's bad omen and at first it did seem like he had been influenced by largely being concussed but as the final few minutes unfolded, it became sort of clear that perhaps Leonard had a point. If you've read the book, you'd know what the outcome of this movie would be. However, things were changed and it's probably a change that made sense for the general audience if nothing else.

It's a change that I'm not too mad about but one that might divide fans of the book or even Andrew and Eric here. As a couple, there's good chemistry between Ben Aldridge and Jonathan Groff. Also while I appreciated the use of flashbacks to flesh out their relationship, I do wish we had seen a bit more intimacy with the pair of them. Saying that, this does seem like a better step forward for mainstream gay couples in the genre, so there's that.

As for the doomsday guys in question, both Leonard and Sabrina were the only two that the movie dedicated enough time on and both Dave Bautista and Nikki Amuka-Bird were excellent. I did feel a bit bad for Adriane but Raymond (or Rory) was definitely the most antagonistic of the group before his rather quick demise. 

- This is the second movie from Shyalaman to be an R-Rated one. There's a bit of a Tarantino influence as well with certain scenes.

- Each of the strangers wore a different colour (Leonard/white, Sabrina/yellow, Raymond/red and Adriane/blue) to represent being one of the horsemen of the apocalypse.

- Standout music: Boogie Shoes certainly got used in a rather interesting way, especially towards the end of the movie.

- Chronology: I'm going to assume 2023 for most of this movie.

Knock At The Cabin made for a tense thriller with excellent performances from Ben Aldridge, Jonathan Groff, Dave Bautista and Nikki Amuka-Bird. Shyalaman (who even had a brief cameo in the ,movie) delivered with the script and this will probably be regarded as one of his stronger of movies.

Rating: 8 out of 10