Knock At The Cabin (2023 film)

Category: Pre-apocalypse hostage thriller.

-----

I watched this as soon as I saw it in my streaming service because I really wanted to see if Dave Bautista, former pro-wrestler and MMA fighter, had acting chops - and the verdict is yes, the man can act. And if it wasn't for his hulking size and numerous tatts, you almost wouldn't know he was a wrestler in a previous life.

Knock At The Cabin tells the story of a gay couple with an adopted Chinese daughter holidaying at a lakeside cabin who are then held hostage by a group of four (one of them being Big Dave, another being Ron Weasley from Harry Potter) stating that one of the family of three has to willingly be killed in order to avert the coming apocalypse.

The drama builds as each member of the group of four is killed ritually, followed by live news reports of sudden disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis and planes falling out of the sky, all the while Eric and Andrew fight their belief and disbelief respectively as well as trying to protect their young daughter from the horror on display.

Intertwined with all this is the two men's belief that they are being targeted because of their sexuality, not helped by the fact that Rupert Grint's character was jailed for assaulting the two men years ago.

I won't spoil the ending, but I will say this movie is very much an M. Night Shyamalan movie - make of that what you will. And Shyamalan's cameo in the movie provides some awesome comic relief!

I'm a bit conflicted about this movie - I really wanted to like it, but at the end, I just felt "meh", and that was after the very MNS ending.

On one hand, Shyamalan could have easily made this a full-tilt R-18 horror film - the material was definitely there for it, and maybe an R18 would have allowed more room for creativity. But on the other hand, by not making the movie a gore-fest, he has to rely on the story and the acting to carry it. The actors DEFINITELY carried the piece, which means that what let the movie down was the story - we don't get any glimpse or flashbacks in to how the group of four met, we don't see their visions, and for material that makes so many references to religious concepts, there is hardly any religion or over-arching theme - so who or what is driving everything? Without that, the movie is essentially an apocalypse fever-dream.

The movie is based on the book Cabin At The End Of The World, and maybe the book had a more poignant ending or maybe it fleshed out the characters more, and something got lost in translation…dunno… 

FINAL STAR RATING: 2.5/5 - it was going to be 2, but props to Big Dave.