Knock at the Cabin (2023) (1 Viewer)

[TravisR]

I understand that the twist in The Sixth Sense is so good and so memorable that it forever made Shyamalan "Mr. Twist" but how many of his movies actually have a twist at the end? I don't mean something like Split

Spoiler

where it's revealed that it takes place in the world of Unbreakable

but a real twist at the end of the story. I must be forgetting something but the last one I remember is The Village and that was nearly 20 (!) years ago. Whatever ones have had twists, they're certainly not a priority or something that Shyamalan feels like putting in every picture he makes.


Also, the ending of the book sounds needlessly nihilistic and I'm happy Shyamalan changed it.

 

[benbess]

Old from 2021 had a twist ending.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Old from 2021 had a twist ending.

I must be forgetting it then. I recall an explanation but not a twist.

 

[benbess]

Insightful profile article from The New York Times....

What Will It Take to Trust M. Night Shyamalan? (Published 2023)

The director, whose latest is “Knock at the Cabin,” has been working to regain audience faith, one B-movie at a time.

www.nytimes.com

"What Will It Take to Trust M. Night Shyamalan?
The director, whose latest is “Knock at the Cabin,” has been working to regain audience faith, one B-movie at a time.
By Amy Nicholson, Feb. 3, 2023

A man enters a dark room and faces a suspicious audience. Within these four walls, he explains, he’s going to tell captive strangers a tale with life-or-death stakes. But first, he needs something crucial from them: their trust. Gaining trust isn’t easy for Leonard (Dave Bautista), a heavily tattooed muscleman wielding a pitchfork fused to a scythe in “Knock at the Cabin.” It’s even harder for the film’s director, M. Night Shyamalan, a yarn-spinner who’s become more associated with the twist than Chubby Checker.

“I don’t look at it as a kind of fancy dance move,” Shyamalan said of his trickster reputation in a 2021 NPR interview. “Now I’m going to do the moonwalk, everybody! Here we go!” Shyamalan insists he’s not after gotchas. He’s a spiritualist chasing moments of epiphany, that exhalation when the reveal of one piece of information makes the world make sense....

“The Sixth Sense” freed Shyamalan from his creative rut — and mired him in a new one. On a rewatch, you can appreciate how he lays out evidence for the film’s “I see dead people” twist from the start. It’s an example of anagnorisis, the recognition of a character’s true nature, a literary device reaching back to Oedipus and beyond. (Aristotle proclaimed it storytelling’s most satisfying reveal.)....the filmmaker said that he’d told the DreamWorks executive Nina Jacobson, “Now people don’t know what they’re going to get when they come see my movies. I’m saying, ‘You can’t trust me at all — you don’t know where I’m going.’”

....Shyamalan borrowed money against his house to make the $5 million found-footage horror flick “The Visit” (2015). Every Hollywood studio passed on distributing it, so he flew home to Philadelphia and polished his edit until Universal said yes. “The Visit” grossed $98 million worldwide, and the director used a cut of his windfall to fund the next film, “Split,” which grossed $278 million, and the next, “Glass,” $247 million; each was shot on his own dime with complete creative independence and all but one of them shot in, essentially, his own backyard. The exception is “Old” (2021), which, because of the pandemic, was filmed at a locked-down resort in the Dominican Republic. He paid for that out of pocket, too. The truth is, today’s shaky cinematic landscape can barely support the current Spielberg, let alone the next. Instead, Shyamalan is blueprinting a new paradigm. He’s the rare brand-name filmmaker who prefers to be a low-budget outsider, the most famous B-movie director in the world leading the charge to thrill audiences through cheap pictures with clever hooks built right into the title. He’s no longer hiding his best ideas until the end."

Much more at the link.

 

[Sam Posten]

I liked it. My nephew was lukewarm on it.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

But Dave Bautista is the absolute real deal as an actor. His characters all feel completely different from one another, and he embodies each one with total commitment.

It does seem that you can pull actors out of the wrestling ranks. It has now occurred several times and generally with good results. Dwayne Johnson has something many actors, that have studied acting, do not have...a natural charisma that comes through on camera. Bautista does as well and he has something else over Johnson, an amazing voice. I would also say he has a more expressive face than Johnson. Johnson, because he is more traditionally handsome, does not convey as much with his face, and hence gets the hero roles. Bautista being unique looking, with a tremendous voice, and extremely expressive face, allows him to portray much more than that.

Of course, it will be interesting to see what roles he gets as his career proceeds. He's had some really great opportunities so far to play things that are much more diverse than just super hero or franchise villain parts. I hope that continues. He is an interesting screen presence.

 

[Jason_V]

I went to a late afternoon show on Saturday on a whim...I didn't have anything else to do. I can't say I was disappointed with Knock at the Cabin because I had no expectations. I also can't say I was bored because I wasn't.

I think the right word is intrigued. How do Eric and Andrew get out of this predicament?

Something stuck out for me very late in the movie: this is a movie about faith in humanity. Is humanity inherently good or inherently bad? Does humanity deserve a sacrifice? I'm not sure Eric and Andrew agree with the answer even at the beginning of the movie, but Andrew is the more outspoken and opinionated of the two, so Eric tries not to rock the boat too much. But that difference in their opinions becomes more pronounced as the movie goes on.

Andrew's outlook is colored by his attack. One would imagine Eric's would be too, but, again, his desire to not rock the boat shows through. Even though he witnessed what happened, he is steadfast in his belief in the good of humanity. Eric is even keeled throughout.

A weird thing also hit me: for everything that happened, Andrew looks remarkably put together in the closing moments of the movie. He is relatively calm and peaceful, his eyes don't show the bloodshot redness I expected. Maybe this is him finding the peace that Eric had.

 

[TravisR]

A weird thing also hit me: for everything that happened, Andrew looks remarkably put together in the closing moments of the movie. He is relatively calm and peaceful, his eyes don't show the bloodshot redness I expected. Maybe this is him finding the peace that Eric had.

I'd have chalked that up to shock and exhaustion more than anything else but I like your idea more.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Insightful profile article from The New York Times....

What Will It Take to Trust M. Night Shyamalan? (Published 2023)

The director, whose latest is “Knock at the Cabin,” has been working to regain audience faith, one B-movie at a time.

www.nytimes.com

"What Will It Take to Trust M. Night Shyamalan?
The director, whose latest is “Knock at the Cabin,” has been working to regain audience faith, one B-movie at a time.
By Amy Nicholson, Feb. 3, 2023

A man enters a dark room and faces a suspicious audience. Within these four walls, he explains, he’s going to tell captive strangers a tale with life-or-death stakes. But first, he needs something crucial from them: their trust. Gaining trust isn’t easy for Leonard (Dave Bautista), a heavily tattooed muscleman wielding a pitchfork fused to a scythe in “Knock at the Cabin.” It’s even harder for the film’s director, M. Night Shyamalan, a yarn-spinner who’s become more associated with the twist than Chubby Checker.

“I don’t look at it as a kind of fancy dance move,” Shyamalan said of his trickster reputation in a 2021 NPR interview. “Now I’m going to do the moonwalk, everybody! Here we go!” Shyamalan insists he’s not after gotchas. He’s a spiritualist chasing moments of epiphany, that exhalation when the reveal of one piece of information makes the world make sense....

“The Sixth Sense” freed Shyamalan from his creative rut — and mired him in a new one. On a rewatch, you can appreciate how he lays out evidence for the film’s “I see dead people” twist from the start. It’s an example of anagnorisis, the recognition of a character’s true nature, a literary device reaching back to Oedipus and beyond. (Aristotle proclaimed it storytelling’s most satisfying reveal.)....the filmmaker said that he’d told the DreamWorks executive Nina Jacobson, “Now people don’t know what they’re going to get when they come see my movies. I’m saying, ‘You can’t trust me at all — you don’t know where I’m going.’”

....Shyamalan borrowed money against his house to make the $5 million found-footage horror flick “The Visit” (2015). Every Hollywood studio passed on distributing it, so he flew home to Philadelphia and polished his edit until Universal said yes. “The Visit” grossed $98 million worldwide, and the director used a cut of his windfall to fund the next film, “Split,” which grossed $278 million, and the next, “Glass,” $247 million; each was shot on his own dime with complete creative independence and all but one of them shot in, essentially, his own backyard. The exception is “Old” (2021), which, because of the pandemic, was filmed at a locked-down resort in the Dominican Republic. He paid for that out of pocket, too. The truth is, today’s shaky cinematic landscape can barely support the current Spielberg, let alone the next. Instead, Shyamalan is blueprinting a new paradigm. He’s the rare brand-name filmmaker who prefers to be a low-budget outsider, the most famous B-movie director in the world leading the charge to thrill audiences through cheap pictures with clever hooks built right into the title. He’s no longer hiding his best ideas until the end."

Much more at the link.

This is what I love about Mr. Shyamalan, that he is an independent making his own original pictures. It does not matter much what I think of them, I have not enjoyed them all nor do I think they are all good films, but they are all well made and thoughtful, which I appreciate. In this age of franchise and formula, I like that he is out there doing his own thing.

To me, his pictures mostly seem like feature length Twilight Zone episodes, I don't think of them as twist pictures but just pictures where he wants to get you to consider the ideas he is presenting. I did not find Old and The Visit to be that great but they were well made and you could tell they were Shyamalan pictures. You could tell a person made them and that person was intrigued by the ideas in them.

 

[Malcolm R]

M. Night Shyamalan twist endings ranked (spoilers, of course)

 

[TonyD]

This is on Peacock now.

Just finished it up.

I’d put this close to the top of his more recent movies only because the acting and the writing was better then it’s been for the last 10 years or so.
I like Old but the acting was tiff and the dialog was brutal.

This one was better, the actors felt real. They didn’t speak in staccato tones.

It was clear to me pretty early in that These people were the four horsemen of the apocalypse and I was fine with that.

Bautista is great and this movie will forward his career.
Also loved him in his small part in 2049.
Thought he was pretty good in that movie where he was a spy and had a little girl with him.