Knock at the Cabin Review: Deadly Decisions

Walking into an M. Night Shyamalan movie, I never know what I'm going to expect but I definitely wanted to watch his newest film, Knock at the Cabin. The premise follows a family of three vacationing in a remote cabin in the woods, when they are unexpectedly held hostage by four armed strangers who urge them to sacrifice one of their own to prevent the apocalypse.

The movie opens in rural Pennsylvania with Chinese-American seven-year-old girl named Wen (Kristen Cui) who is catching grasshoppers until she is approached by a charming, bulky stranger named Leonard (Dave Bautista). They spend time catching grasshoppers and having a casual conversation, until he reveals that Wen and her parents' are needed to save humanity. Wen's suspicions begin to grow once she sees three other strangers slowly approaching their way armed with brutal weapons. She runs back to the remote cabin to warn her dads, Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge) about what is happening. As they realize danger lurking at their door, they lock and barricade the cabin's entry points. They successfully break in holding the family hostage by tying up both Eric and Andrew, and Eric being nursed from sustaining a concussion.

Eric and Andrew are very skeptical of their intentions, assuming they are targeted for being a gay couple as they are no strangers to hate crimes. Leonard and his accomplices - Adriane (Abby Quinn), Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), and Redmond (Rupert Grint), who have never met before until now, inform them they have no intent to harm the family whatsoever. They begin to explain their visions each had of oceans rising, a plague, the sky falling, and darkness covering the world. They continue to share the only option to prevent any of this from happening is if they sacrifice one of their own, and if they don't choose, all of humanity will perish and they will survive the apocalypse existing as the only people on the planet alive.

M. Night Shyamalan has a very unique approach to his films with the use of color symbolism, allegories, and expecting the unexpected. A particular allegory used is the grasshoppers relevant to their situation. When Wen catches the grasshoppers she places them in a glass jar with a hole-poked lid top, preventing them from escaping. This is similar to the situation the family is put in by the strangers and how the glass jar represents the cabin - once they enter in there is no way out.

Later it's revealed the four strangers represent the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and that each one represents a full spectrum of humanity - guidance, nurturing, healing, and malice. Another tiny detail are the shirt colors Leonard, Adriane, Sabrina, and Redmond wear representing the color of each horseman - Black (Famine), Pale (Death), White (Pestilence), and Red (War).

Knock at the Cabin also takes us to the past with flashbacks of Eric and Andrew before they adopted Wen and after - overall humanizing the characters so we have a backstory. We even learn the backgrounds of the four strangers as well, as far as who they are and where they're from.

The movie keeps you guessing and questioning if these two loving parents will sacrifice their sweet little daughter or their own spouse to save the world as time is dwindling down. This movie by far delivers great acting and good suspense, not so much diving into the horror genre, but the situation itself is horrific and truly terrifying.

Knock at the Cabin is now playing in theaters. Rated R for language and violence with a runtime of 100 minutes.