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Knock at the Cabin

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By Parama vibinPublished 12 months ago 3 min read
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Knock at the Cabin

The latest apocalypse-themed movie from director M. Night Shyamalan, Knock at the Cabin, fails to live up to expectations. Despite the rich cinematography from co-cinematographers Jarin Blaschke and Lowell A. Meyer, and the uniformly intense performances from the cast, the story falls flat. The film uses the threat of an impending apocalypse to create a morality study, but it progressively hollows itself out, lacking any real resonance. While the performances are striking, Shyamalan's larger intent doesn't give the film nearly enough depth.

The standout performance comes from Dave Bautista, who plays a second-grade teacher named Leonard. He unites with three others (played by Rupert Grint, Abby Quinn, and Nikki Amuka-Bird), who have all had life-changing visions of the apocalypse. Together, they approach a cabin in the woods with weapons in hand, hoping to prevent the end of the world. The family inside the cabin, consisting of two dads and their adopted daughter Wen, must decide whether to kill one of their own to stop the apocalypse. The captors insist that if they don't comply, something terrible will happen and a plague will be unleashed.

The film explores the power of belief and its ability to both build communities and destroy lives. However, it fails to wriggle in the magnanimous uncertainty of belief and instead lazily stirs the fear of conspiracy. The lack of nuance in handling this idea is confirmed when Shyamalan's expected twist comes only minutes before the end. The film also lacks emotional stakes, failing to create the terror that could have made the threat of violence in this immediate scenario more impactful.

Despite its flaws, the script does succeed in making the audience worry for the targeted family. Eric and Andrew's love story, and their life with adopted daughter Wen, are both heartwarming and heartbreaking, respectively. Groff and Aldridge's performances are standout, portraying characters that slowly become opposites. Ultimately, Knock at the Cabin is a minor work from a director whose films have been mostly major, and it fails to live up to its potential.

M Night Shyamalan has once again disappointed his viewers in his latest film, Knock at the Cabin. Despite an interesting concept and a gripping opening scene, the film quickly falls apart and turns out to be complete rubbish. It is a supposed apocalyptic horror story, adapted from a bestselling book, but the big reveal is anti-climactic and unimpressive. The characters lack motivation and the overall story is exasperatingly deficient in ingenuity and genuine thrills.

However, like Shyamalan's previous apocalyptic film, The Happening, there is a real thrill in the opening scene of Knock at the Cabin. The scene features a great dialogue between Dave Bautista and Kristen Cui, who plays an eight-year-old girl named Wen. Wen is playing alone in a beautiful woodland near a cabin where her two gay dads are hanging out. Suddenly, she notices a large and ominous man approaching her. This man, Leonard, played by Bautista, befriends her, but his intentions are unclear.

Soon, Leonard is joined by three other people carrying strange-looking weapons, and they reveal to Wen that the world is about to end, and her family must make a tough decision to prevent it. The family is taken prisoner, and their captors' fanaticism is hypnotic, almost persuasive. But could one of these captors be someone familiar to the two men?

Unfortunately, many things in the story are left unresolved or resolved in a deeply unsatisfactory manner. The film's ambiguous finale is ridiculous, and it fails to maintain the good idea it had at the beginning. Shyamalan has previously shown he can maintain a good idea to the finish line, as seen in his excellent horror-thriller Old. However, he falls short in Knock at the Cabin.

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Parama vibin

I am Content writer ,Follow me get the updates. My role as a content writer is to create valuable and informative content that establishes a brand's authority, enhances its online presence, and engages its audience

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