Cory's Reads #27: A Reputation Earned
In his newest film KNOCK AT THE CABIN, M. Night Shyamalan knows who you think he is.
**HEAVY SPOILERS for Knock at the Cabin ahead***
If anyone can resurrect this newsletter from the dead, it’s the master of deception himself, M. Night Shyamalan.
Shyamalan’s latest film Knock at the Cabin hit theaters this past weekend, toppling longtime box office king Avatar: The Way of Water. James Cameron’s miraculous sequel remained atop the U.S. box office for seven consecutive weeks, before finally giving way to Shyamalan’s horror-thriller. Despite its seeming dominance, Knock at the Cabin becomes its director’s lowest-grossing film in its opening weekend. I’ll willingly chalk that performance up to some surprising competition from 80 for Brady, not to mention The Way of Water’s refusal to die completely. Knock at the Cabin may have emerged as the weekend’s winner with roughly $14 million, but 80 for Brady finished just $2 million behind, with The Way of Water trailing that film by just another $2 million. The success of Knock at the Cabin — adapted from the Paul Tremblay novel The Cabin at the End of the World — could just as easily be read as an achievement or a disappointment. But as a high-profile director who has been self-funding his work since 2015, Shyamalan will surely accept the performance.
Risk, meet reward.
Like many a mainstream director, Shyamalan has his share of critics and acolytes. I unabashedly count myself among the latter group. I wrote extensively about the brilliance of 2021’s Old around the time of its release, and have defended the controversial director amidst even his career’s deepest lulls.
Maybe it’s our shared love of Philadelphia, or our soft spots for a diabolical twist. More probably, however, M. Night Shyamalan is just a really fucking good director. Any suggestions to the contrary seem to stem from a reluctance to submit one’s self to the sincerity of his work. The idiosyncratic dialogue and unsettling camerawork feel out of place in a landscape dominated by the Disney assembly line, but they are ultimately indicative of an artist at the height of his powers, unembarrassed of the vulnerabilities such success tends to bring with it. Even with their B-movie thrills, Shyamalan’s films always deliver common themes. The climate crisis, religious zealotry, and the spiritual release of a last-minute epiphany are all frequent phenomena in Shyamalan’s filmography. To discuss such ideas in an ever-politicized climate can feel cringeworthy or shameful, but Shyamalan is unafraid to engage us in these conversations, no matter the repercussions.
Even with their repetition across films, these recurring ideas feel fresh once again in Knock at the Cabin, particularly as the auteur manages to reinvent both himself and his storytelling over 30 years into his career. Shyamalan has worked with several talented actors throughout his career, but his collaboration here with Dave Bautista seems like an especially appropriate marriage. Bautista’s Leonard is a gentle giant, concealing his rage with an unsettling tranquility. It’s a tricky role that most performers would play as too violent or too soft. Bautista instead strikes an uneasy balance between calm and cruel, brooding and brutal. Surrounded by several other excellent performances — Rupert Grint is another Shyamalan collaborator seemingly born to deliver the director’s darkly comedic lines — Bautista anchors a film lacking its creator’s most signature touch.
For all his associations with twist endings and shocking reveals, Shyamalan makes an arguably even more shocking decision with Knock at the Cabin. This time, the twist is that there is no twist at all.
It’s a decision that will undoubtedly leave many viewers unfulfilled. Watching an M. Night Shyamalan film almost always doubles as an exercise for the mind. The pleasures of his storytelling are derived primarily from feeling duped, only to then be able to connect his narrative dots ourselves. The precision of Shyamalan’s plotting can be admittedly uneven at times, but it is compulsively compelling nevertheless.
How is it then that Knock at the Cabin manages to be one of Shyamalan’s best films in nearly two decades, even as it foregoes a trademark twist? Indeed, Knock at the Cabin is the kind of film only a director as established as Shyamalan could make. The film’s (un)surprising ending is only earned via its arrival so deep into its director’s career. Shyamalan knows how he is perceived, and he is dangling that perception in front of us on a fishing hook.
Of course, the unexpectedly literal nature of Knock at the Cabin’s finale serves a vital function within the world of the film as well. Shyamalan’s misdirection has proven both divisive and divine over the years, with the director clarifying that he enjoys such deceptive storytelling as it provides a unique form of catharsis on the part of the viewer. There may be comfort in such catharsis, but not every situation calls for that.
2008’s The Happening, for example, is devoid of a defining twist. Although that film remains amongst Shyamalan’s most maligned, its overt focus on the climate crisis benefits from Shyamalan’s restraint as a storyteller. Knock at the Cabin similarly evokes environmental catastrophe, rendering it a kind of cousin to the 2008 eco-thriller. Knock at the Cabin also resonates with Shyamalan’s 2002 film Signs, with their shared focus on a home invasion and a central family whose willingness to believe in something greater than themselves is put to the ultimate test. One could easily view Knock at the Cabin as a spiritual successor to both films, and its modifications to Shyamalan’s storytelling formula only further illustrate the point. Whereas the twist in Signs, for example, serves as miraculous confirmation of its protagonists’ spirituality, Knock at the Cabin cannot afford to confirm its protagonists’ beliefs.
It’s a tricky conundrum the film puts itself in, as compelling evidence exists on both sides of its central argument. We as viewers also have every reason to support Andrew (Ben Aldridge) in his assertion that he will protect his family before he saves the rest of the world. After all, the world has been cruel to him and his husband Eric (Jonathan Groff), and such cruelty feels particularly painful when one of the home invaders — Redmond (Rupert Grint) — is revealed to be Andrew’s former attacker. Andrew questions why he should trust a homophobic man who insists that one of Andrew, Eric, or their daughter Wen (Kristen Cui) must die. And for good reason! The whole situation does sound ridiculous. Redmond does seem untrustworthy. And the world has been unforgiving to the couple. By the time all the evidence — emotional and otherwise — has been laid out, Shyamalan’s reveal that the apocalypse truly is impending, and that one of Andrew, Eric, or Wen must truly die, may feel like a classic M. Night twist after all.
Shyamalan was already on the cutting edge in confronting the environmental crisis in 2008, but his concerns have only grown more urgent in the decade-and-a-half since. Knock at the Cabin must therefore confirm its antagonists’ shared worldview, as unsettling as it may be.
Sometimes, the film contends, things are just exactly as they appear.
It’s far from a comforting idea. After all, we see how much it pains Leonard, Adriane (Abby Quinn), and Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird) to carry out their sacrifice. They may count a despicable homophobe in Redmond among their ranks, but even they know that cannot distract them from their mission. The truth can be ugly, and it can be delivered by even uglier people. Andrew’s frustration with a world that has laughed at and looked down upon his sexuality is entirely validated, which makes his ensuing decision that much more painful.
Fans of the film’s source material may have been struck by Shyamalan’s drastic departure from the events in the text, but I find that it’s only fair to evaluate the film on its own merits. Issues of adaptation will always be tricky, and Knock at the Cabin is no exception, but Shyamalan clearly has his own vision for this story and what it represents. And to that end, I find he has executed that vision expertly. Even as the director resolves our most glaring questions, and leaves us bobbing our heads to KC and the Sunshine Band’s “Boogie Shoes”, we can’t help but wonder what good is this saved world.
In the film’s final scene, Andrew and Wen enter a diner. Patrons make teary-eyed phone calls to loved ones. But who loves these two? We know Andrew’s parents do not approve of his sexuality. We know Wen has now lost one of her fathers. On the surface, it’s a happy ending that rejects the onslaught of miserable images our televisions project at us day in and day out. But just a little deeper lies a lingering melancholy, a somber sense that this is not the end, but only the beginning.
Leonard suggests that this particular family was chosen because their love is so pure in spite of what it has endured. So how many more victims must this dying planet claim? How many more undeserving families must make a choice? And as Eric came to terms with his own sacrifice via divine intervention, one can’t help but wonder if there is even a choice at all.
Of course, Leonard and his fellow attackers insist that there is “always a choice”. The claim comes right before they each take their own lives, obeying an entity who just might disagree.