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Elijah Hunt

Knock at the Cabin - Film Review

Knock at the Cabin is the brand new M. Night Shyamalan movie of 2023 and may be a return to him making good movies. After Old, I really lost faith in him being able to surprise the audience with a twist they could enjoy. He's had some really good twists... with Sixth Sense being the prime example. Also, The Village and Signs. He became known as the guy with huge twists at the end of his movies...but then they just got bad.


Examples being The Happening, After Earth, Glass, Old, etc. So I guess it made sense for him to ditch the twists he became known for so that this movie stands out a bit.


Instead of trying to mislead you all the time and having a half-baked twist at the end, M. Night just tries to focus on his characters and their very confined situation.


For the most part I'd say he succeeded. But this movie does, unfortunately, have a major weak spot for me, and that is that it isn't nearly as long as it needs to be. It's a very brisk hour and forty minutes, and I feel it would have greatly benefitted its characters if it took the time to flesh out the backstories of its leads more. It also needed to flesh out those "captors" more as some just didn't get the screen-time they needed to flesh themselves out enough for the audience to feel invested in their characters. I felt there was so much more to explore with them that we just never got to see, and that's quite disappointing as I do really like them as our "villains" of sorts for the movie.


It has nothing to do with the performances either, as I quite enjoyed the actors' portrayals of their characters. Rupert Grint brings a really funny performance because of how angry his character is. Dave Bautista also gives an incredible performance, which may also be his best performance so far...perhaps only rivaled by his character portrayal in Blade Runner 2049.


But Dave and Rupert aren't the only great performances in this movie; the leads of the movie are fantastic and provide a very heartwarming and heartbreaking element throughout the whole film. But I really just wanted to get to know them a little more and I feel the movie would have greatly benefitted from that.


As for two minor issues I had: M. Night's dialogue is a tad cheesy for my taste. It didn't bug me very much in this movie, but it's still there sometimes. The other issue is M. Night keeps the supernatural element very vague. I think It would have helped the movie to clue the audience in to what exactly was going on outside the cabin.


While I had a good time watching Knock at the Cabin, I wish this movie would have explored more of the characters and let things sit for a while instead of rushing to the ending.


Wanted to love it, but I just ended up liking it. Knock at the Cabin is carried by its performances and mystery, but doesn't clue you in enough to what is going on behind the scenes.


Knock at the Cabin gets a B-.

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