M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin: Seven towards the apocalypse

The author is behind an analysis project about M. Night Shyamalan‘s films. There are several articles on each: The Sixth Sense (1999, here, here and here), Unbreakable (2000, here, here and here), Signs (2002, here, here, here and here), The Village (2004, here, here and here), Lady in the Water (2006, here and here), The Happening (2008, here, here and here), The Last Airbender (2010, here and here), After Earth (2013, here and here), Split (2016, here, here, here, and here), Glass (2019, here) and Old (2021, here). All the articles can also be accessed through this overview.

The events of Knock at the Cabin will be freely discussed with no spoiler warnings. For a summary of the plot see here.

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Knock at the Cabin (2023) is a riveting experience, powerfully tapping into highly topical, online-fuelled phenomena like irreconcilable world views, gaslighting and conspiracy theories. It can also be taken as a metaphor of humanity refusing to sacrifice anything in the face of mounting evidence of apparently escalating environmental disasters. Ultimately, however, it is about the timeless theme of the nobility and necessity of sacrifice.

M. Night Shyamalan is mining this adaptation (with some major changes) of Paul Tremblay‘s lauded 2018 horror novel “The Cabin at the End of the World” for maximum intensity via its many contrasts. Not only the intrusion of absolute irrationality into an idyllic vacation, but the behaviour of the four invaders are swinging from the most banal normality to periodically being transformed into automatons performing acts of unspeakable brutality, killing others and letting themselves be executed.

Finally, their bizarre need to become friends with their tied-up victims provides a darkly humorous, absurd layer, following up the opening scene’s exquisite feeling of quiet-before-the-storm estrangement, as a fairy-tale-like gentle giant turns up out of nowhere to befriend a little girl.

A pivotal moment as a victim finds significance in the blinding light reflected in the mirror while the invaders are lined up for their deadly ritual.

The unbelievable story is, crucially, grounded in terrific performances from the entire ensemble. How on earth did his former career as a professional wrestler prepare the towering Dave Bautista, who has now been critically lauded, for this subtle performance, with perfectly modulated line deliveries, as the mild-mannered and (sometimes comically) well-meaning Leonard, the leader of four everyday people determined to prevent the apocalypse?

The cataclysm can only be avoided if one of the family of three in the rented, remote cabin decides to willingly sacrifice themselves and be killed by another family member. Jonathan Groff and (especially) Ben Aldridge are excellent as the same-sex parents Eric and Andrew – always hitting the right tones, either of incredulity over the intruders’ odd behaviour, fear of their unpredictability, helpless rage over the situation, or constant worry that they have been targeted because they are gay.

Eric is calm, thoughtful but also overly cautious, while the more aggressive, single-minded Andrew is one of Shyamalan’s countless deeply traumatised characters, here after a homophobic physical attack that landed him in years of therapy. Andrew’s outburst of rage against the “monsters” of the outside world when it dawns upon him that Eric is seriously considering sacrificing himself for them, thus depriving Andrew of the love of his life, comes across with a searing emotional honesty.

Eric and Andrew.

From a dialogue hint in a flashback Eric seems open to religion and might even be practising – which becomes key for him to not only realising that the strangers are modern-day versions of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse but also to the film’s resolution – while on the other hand, again without it clearly stated, Andrew’s parents, who sternly reject his gay partner, are likely to be deeply religious. Throughout the ordeal, Andrew seems worried that his partner will be swayed by the invaders. This fear of allowing anything that might make one diverge from a chosen path is mirrored by Leonard, who refuses to entertain the thought that one of his now-deceased associates might have had a personal motive to seek out the gay couple. It is ironic that, unlike in real life, the crackpot ideas expounded by the invaders turn out to be true – it is not like Shyamalan is endorsing conspiracy theories in this movie but the story needs a dramatic climax.

Kristen Cui is yet another enchanting child performer in Shyamalan’s work as Wen, Eric and Andrew’s soon eight-year-old adoptive daughter. The rest of the intruders are played by Abby Quinn, as the sharp-featured, wild-eyed Adriane who seems both overwhelmed but also very proud to have been elevated from a line cook to this exalted position; Nikki Amuka-Bird as Sabrina, a nurse who loves to heal but also knows where to inflict wounds to prevent victims from escaping; and Rupert Grint as the impatient, volatile Redmond, who appears to have an odd connection to Andrew (discussed here).

An angry Redmond and a glassy-eyed Adriane.

What drives the invaders is their shared visions of future disaster and doomsday, which shall come in four waves, resulting in the eradication of mankind. A counterpart of sorts is constituted by four flashbacks, equally divided between trauma (Andrew’s parents rejecting Eric; Andrew subjected to the homophobic attack) and joy (their initial encounter with the orphan Wen; their collective performance routine of Eric’s favourite song in the car and then upon arrival frolicking in the lake).

There is another vision in the film, however, forming a centrepiece of its emotional climax. In a sweepingly fluid, one-take flashforward – soundless except for Eric’s voice-over and Shyamalan’s new discovery, Icelandic composer Herdís Stefánsdóttir‘s evocative score – we see Andrew accompanying a happy adult Wen decades into the future.

Eric says she is “living her life exactly as she wanted to”; she is “everything we always hoped for” and that “she found someone who loves her and who she loves just as much. Just like her dads.”
And how does the vision end? With Andrew and Wen entering a car, creating an almost casual but fitting connection to the film’s last scene, but here with the adult Wen in the driver’s seat.

Like the ones of the invaders, this vision too is shared: it is so compelling that Andrew is able to see the absolute truth of it, which enables him to pull the trigger to complete Eric’s sacrifice – not like robots compelled by a strange ritual in the case of the visitors, but as a conscious, deliberate decision, powered by both intellectual reasoning and emotional love.

In a film driven by drama and enthralment about the plot’s unfolding, there is not that much deep emotion, until that sudden scene. It works on this viewer in the same way however many times Knock at the Cabin is seen: Eric’s almost whisper of a voice, the small beatific smile on his face, his eyes closed to hold the vision before his inner eye in his moment of death – while he is “thinking the most beautiful thought”.

The situation is made even more unique by the composition: never before in the film have we seen Eric and Andrew in profile in the same close-up.

Knock at the Cabin‘s last shot, with 120 seconds its second longest take, is filmed as if from the vantage point of Eric’s spirit, looking through the windshield at his surviving family in the front seat of a truck, observing how they are starting to come to terms with his death by allowing his favourite song to continue playing on the radio.

Is there a supernatural element here – his spirit willing the song to appear as a last message and helping them reconcile with their loss? They are also leaving him behind, however, reversing the car away from him while he and the camera stay rooted to the ground, ultimately leaving him to look at the car as it disappears into the distance.

Recurring obsessions

Knock at the Cabin has a lot in common with Shyamalan’s previous film Old (2021), sharing the same font in the opening titles and the fact that they are adaptations of existing works. There is also a similar race against time: the heroes must act quickly before the world dies, while in Old before they perish themselves. Here too there is a limited cast of characters from diverse walks of life under terrible strain and dying one after each other – cut off from the outside world, although in Knock the mayhem is mostly happening in the outside world, not confined to the beach in Old.

They also feature the same (apparent) obsession the characters have with volunteering information about themselves, and especially keen on announcing their occupations.

It is hard to describe the profound weirdness of the intruders’ astounding behaviour before the full ramifications of their errand is explained.

Seemingly intended as a comical estrangement effect in Old – as well as showing how the characters are uselessly clinging to their former identities when facing the strangeness of the beach – it did not always work so well. The effect in the early stages of Knock is a full-on success, however – profoundly weird, and with the motivation behind it eventually easier to understand: the intruders are really trying to connect with their victims on a human level.

Adriane’s information at a much later stage that her little daughter “likes pancakes” is a touching echo of this, but now said with a helpless resignation that fully recognises the futility of it, the words becoming virtually her last ones in life.

From Adriane’s final moments.

Andrew’s rage against the cruelty of the outside world and the couple’s need to protect their innocent child mirror The Village (2004) population and their absolute rejection of everything external, as well as the setting of a small civilisation surrounded by forest, with their social life governed by elaborate rituals.

The disaster movie angle is shared with Signs (2002), in both films with the catastrophe only viewed through TV reports, with home invasions and the Signs aliens in one instance knocking on the defenders’ cellar door.  (The knocking in the new movie seems highly ritualistic: the invaders are pounding the door seven times in a row, one for each of the main characters. The knocking is repeated at the very finish of the end titles, four times when the film title is visible, a fifth time exactly as it disappears, possibly signifying Eric’s sacrifice, and then two more for the surviving characters.)

The utterly chilling moment when Leonard, who has seen it so many times in his visions, demonstrates he knows the speech of the live TV anchorwoman by heart, thus proving beyond any doubt that the invaders have spoken the truth. Eventually, a vertigo effect is put to work in the shot, making the screen loom larger behind him.

The Happening (2008), another disaster movie, of course also springs to mind, not least via its coda, where the protagonist couple seem to have adopted their friends’ now orphaned daughter, not that much older than Wen, and their pride in her and the beautiful quietude of the coda reflect the serenity of the flashforward of the adult Wen. Its epidemic of mass suicide is echoed in the suicidal sacrifices central to Knock – the score seems to quote the mournful main theme of The Happening just before Adriane’s death – and in the earlier film too the catastrophe suddenly stops, although it is much more unclear whether the protagonists had something to do with it.

The eerie shot in Knock‘s opening scene when Leonard looks away but can see no one in the forest is reminiscent of the girl on the bench in the opening of The Happening where she thinks she hears someone cry out in panic but can only see total normalcy when looking around.

For seasoned Shyamalan viewers, the opening situation between Wen and Leonard will be even more sinister with Split (2016) in mind, whose series of six flashbacks about the heroine as a five-year-old detail her relation to her uncle, a similarly hulking figure with a beard, who turn out to an abuser that will try his best to ruin her life. Knock employs the same structure as Split, with four flashbacks triggered by events in the current timeline, a device not often used by the director.

As for recurring Shyamalan themes and motifs right from the early stages of his career, Knock presents many in their most acute form: sense of purpose and faith – which when acted upon can produce extraordinary results – as well as rituals, here in the fixed nature of the situations when the captives are asked to sacrifice themselves, the line “a part of humanity has been judged” plus the white hood that must be worn before the invaders sacrifice themselves instead, always killed with the same home-made weapons.

Hands have always been a recurring motif for the director so it is not surprising that when Eric sums up the intruders as representing various aspects of humanity, the illustrative shots exclude their faces, focussing on their hands and actions, as seen in the below slide show:

Knowledge of the motif gives added resonance to the fact that the first human element entering the film is (Wen’s) hands, in the second shot:

Soon comes the handshake between Leonard and Wen, the shot composition clearly recalling the fateful shake in the epilogue of Unbreakable (2000) between Mr. Glass and David, signalling additional ominousness for the experienced Shyamalan viewer:

Form

The average shot length of Knock at the Cabin is 6.79 seconds, which is par for the course for Shyamalan since his long-take-dominated period of the early 2000s – statistics for most of his other films can be found here – but Knock is perhaps his most traditionally shot work, as regards framings, editing patterns and mise-en-scène. It is still the work of a meticulous filmmaker but his attention is mainly concerned with the actors and telling the story as clearly as possible, rather than trying to break new ground with inventive directorial flourishes.

There is an undeniable intensity that can be achieved by these traditional means, for example close-ups and the “battle of the mind” usage of shot/reverse shot between predominantly fixed camera positions. (One can also argue that in this case the story in itself is so bizarre that the very “conventionality” of the visual storytelling may create an interesting contrast.) When he is occasionally pushing the envelope, however, the suddenness of the device can be very effective.

The following example is not sensational but nicely underlines the heroes’ confusion and desperation when the intruders try to break down the main door.

This might at first glimpse look like a normal shot of the door handle…
…but as Eric enters the shot from an impossible angle, we realise that the camera is placed underneath the door handle…
…and the next shot is also unusual, from an overhead position. (They look small, like the grasshoppers that Wen trapped in the glass jar.)

The next item is monstrously impactful, however, springing to existence out of nowhere. The camera is tilting to a sideways position at a deliberate pace, giving us time to develop a bewildering sense of wonder about what is in store for us, and then – WHAM! – it goes quickly back down again as if it helps Leonard’s axe in the beheading of Redmond. One has seen a camera imitate a weapon before but this execution appears to be an original idea. See the below slide show (the initial slide is marked by a red border):

In the next second, as Eric is desperately working the ropes as a response to this shock, this marks the first time we see the light from the bathroom window, which will be connected to him in the film.

Knock at the Cabin contains 15 takes longer than 30 seconds – for a full list see here – which is fairly normal for Shyamalan over the last decade or so. One of the more interesting occurs in the fourth and last flashback where a camera movement segues from the taverna to the emergency ward where Andrew is treated after the attack, as if the new location was in the next room. The transgressive nature of the movement underscores how fundamental the event will be for Andrew’s life.

Clocking in at 127 seconds, the shot on the back porch that culminates in Leonard’s ritualistic suicide is the film’s longest:

After having remained stationary until Wen has left the porch for the tree house, the camera creeps up on Leonard during his last speech. An extra point is that the closer we come, the clearer we see that he is actually holding a knife, an object only hinted at in the previous shot. (With the exception of the mostly bloodless shooting of Sabrina, Shyamalan takes great care that all graphic violence, in a film with high body count, must happen outside the frame.) In a very nice touch the next shot of Leonard reveals that at the moment of his death he has set in motion a rocking chair movement.

At one point, the concussed and confused Eric thinks he glimpsed a figure in the light reflected in a mirror. Later a scene starts with a close-up of the bathroom window, marked by a similar flare. Sabrina is treating the back of Eric’s head in there, and not only does the fact that we often see them in a mirror connect to that earlier scene, but she is constantly shown swathed in that light. (Note the simple yet fascinating pattern of the window, dividing it into various areas of fours and threes, referring to the number of people in the two groupings.)

Afterwards, when Eric is back in the living room, we see Sabrina remaining there, still strongly connected to the light, and throughout the film we often see the circular light behind Eric through the open bathroom door:

Shyamalan also draws a fascinating connection between Eric and the green forest visible through the main door, a sight lingered upon in a way that suggests more than just a yearning to escape, or the discomfort of a concussed person over the light.

The others take Redmond’s body out, laboriously so we get a good look through the door…
…and after a panning movement, where through the window we have seen that they place the body on the porch, the shot ends on Eric. He does not seem to have observed that all, and rather than being abhorred by the violence, he looks profoundly moved by something.
In the next shot Sabrina is washing away Redmond’s blood while the camera tilts up, taking in that door again, and the forest, which seems abnormally light.
In the climax, during the last stage of persuading Andrew to kill him, we often see the door in the background…
… and after his sacrifice is complete, the door is central to the shot. One wonders, since the door in the earlier scene was constantly connected to violence, might it be a visual device indicating that Eric has had a vision of his future death, lying in front of that very door?

Some overt symbolism or at least the creating of meaning visually is also perceptible in the next scene, where we for the first time are inside the tree house – a miniature cabin – where Wen has been waiting out the climax:

Since mankind is now saved, the composition is harmonious and symmetric, with Wen and the two windows hinting at the three members of the family, while the green in the windows recalls Eric’s door…
… and in the next shot exactly the same elements are in play, with chairs instead of windows.
After a repetition of the two previous set-ups, this wonderful shot features a signature Shyamalan overhead shot and collects all the previous elements, while adding a new one, a rug that looks both surreal and serene, dividing the image into three sections, again recalling the trifecta of the their family.
A final image of harmony.
Soon comes another great shot, where the thunderstorms and lightning of the fourth plague of the apocalypse have set fire to the cabin, becoming a funeral pyre for Eric and (we assume) all four of the invaders who helped them on the way to save the world.

Our last knock on the door will be a detailed walkthrough of the eerie opening scene, whose strong sense of estrangement is helped by a subtle, sophisticated play on size differences and hierarchies.

The opening shot of a grasshopper makes it look like an enormous creature…
…but its tiny nature is correctly established in the next shot…
…hands are still emphasised in the next shot, which could belong to a grown-up…
…but as the camera moves up, the face reveals it is a child. Wen moves slightly to the side, revealing a cabin behind her, while the insects have been trapped in a jar, foreshadowing how the family will be caught inside the cabin. All through this shot, which is held for a considerable length, her face is seen through the jar, strengthening the connection…
…which is further cemented by her giving the grasshoppers human names (written in different colours, like the different colours of the tops worn by the four invaders).
The next shot keeps both jar and cabin in play, the jar looking enormous.
A look inside the jar. Grasshoppers are connected to plagues in the Bible, which nicely ties in with the invaders’ prophecies of disasters.
Later that day, after the invaders have ended their pleasantries and before Leonard detonates the bomb of their apocalyptic agenda of plagues, there is a heavy-in-meaning cut-away to the forgotten jar, the image maintaining the iron grip between jar and cabin. (The next morning, grasshoppers are seen outside on the cabin window, as if on the move, in thematic anticipation of the three plagues that will be unleashed that day.)
Back in the opening: the camera tilts up, carefully including the insect jar, to take in a figure that appears to be as tiny as them.
The close-up on Wen changes our perspective on her, while the exaggerated booming sounds as Leonard is approaching make it look like an enormous troll is coming out of the woods.
Leonard is increasing in size…
…until he looms over her, helpless like the grasshopper was against her…
…the handshake further drives home the difference in stature.
The giant repeats the little girl’s gesture of catching a grasshopper.
She is impressed by his technique…
…and as if they now are equals, the close-ups during this back-and-forth make them look the same size.
Suddenly he thinks he hears a sound and looks away in anticipation…

Now something funny happens. Just before, when he asked if it bothered her having two fathers, she replied no, except when her “guidance counsellor keeps saying how it’s so great that I have two dads. For some reason it makes me feel like she’s saying the opposite”. Then he looked away and upon her following question about what’s wrong, he answers “nothing at all”.

To visually add to the feeling that she suspects he too is saying the opposite, for the rest of the conversation they are now always shown with a tilted camera (top) and after he has looked away yet again, this continues but in an intensified way (bottom), with the close-ups having become even tighter.
Finally, the three others arrive, in this fantastically ominous shot, and a frightened Wen hurries into the cabin, and the siege starts.

The sense of helpless dread and unavoidable all-encompassing disaster in Knock at the Cabin is reminiscent of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011). Like with that film, however, it is difficult to replicate the full impact of the first-time viewing. This makes the engagement with it somewhat different than other Shyamalan films, which almost invariably yield a deepening of the experience. The high degree of craftsmanship on most levels nevertheless ensures an engrossing future with this movie.

Enclosure: The mysterious connection between Redmond and Andrew

This is perhaps the deepest mystery of Knock at the Cabin, never resolved. Andrew suddenly claims to recognise Redmond, who under the name of Rory O’Bannon was the perpetrator of the homophobic attack and was sentenced to prison for it. The identification card later found on Redmond proves that he is indeed O’Bannon – but what is the significance? Is perhaps the predicament of the couple after all the result of having been targeted precisely because they are gay, with Redmond perhaps having shadowed Andrew on the internet to find out he has rented the cabin?

Or is there some kind of mystical connection between Redmond and Andrew/Eric, a cosmic coincidence that has led the group to precisely their cabin? (But if he did not know they were there, why would he find it necessary to use an assumed name during the whole operation?) Because in the film’s last scene, after the apocalypse have been averted through Eric’s death, Andrew starts the car that the invaders had arrived in, and in a moving moment Eric’s favourite song automatically starts up too. Is this another connection – the same song is also a favourite of Redmond’s? (It is likely his car; there is an employee card with his Rory O’Bannon name on it stuck on the shade.) But the thing is that Andrew and Wen have already used the car, to get to the diner, without the song being on. How come it is starting now?

I much prefer my already discussed interpretation that it is the spirit of Eric that causes the song to be played. I appreciate the poetic justice, however, that the very person who caused Andrew to learn boxing (and get a gun) is the one who gets crushed by Andrew’s fists in the cabin.

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