Knock at the Cabin (2023) Film Review and Trailer.

Movie Rating

INTRODUCTION.

Knock at the Cabin 2023 is an American apocalyptic, psychological horror film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. He also wrote the screenplay from an initial draft by Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman. Knock at the Cabin is based on the 2018 novel “The Cabin at the End of the World” by Paul G. Tremblay.

The film stars Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Kristen Cui, Abby Quinn, and Rupert Grint.

Knock at the Cabin story revolves around a gay couple who, while vacationing with their only child, is taken hostage by armed strangers who demand that the family choose to avert the apocalypse.

Knock at the cabin film runs for 1h and 40 minutes, and English is the only language used.

SYNOPSIS.

While vacationing at a remote cabin, a young girl and her parents are taken hostage by four armed strangers who demand that the family make an unthinkable choice to avert the apocalypse. With limited access to the outside world, the family must decide what they believe before all is lost. – Rottentomatoes

KNOCK AT THE CABIN OFFICIAL TRAILER.

KNOCK AT THE CABIN FILM REVIEW.

Knock at the Cabin was shot in the suburbs of Philadelphia and South Jersey around Burlington County in the towns of Burlington. This mystery film starts in a good way. We don’t know what is happening, and everything seems strange and confusing. As you watch, you’ll find out that the couple is faced with a difficult choice, which makes the audience question what decision they would make and what questions they would ask if put in this situation.

Character/Acting: Dave Bautista, who stars as Leonard, delivers an outstanding performance. He did a good job playing the role of a giant with a heart of gold which is forced to do something horrible.

You can see the sadness in his eyes and his conviction that what he saw in his visions was true. However, the character’s backstories needed to be more developed so we (the audience ) could easily relate to their characters. His character was quickly my favorite, though.

Another performance I was impressed with is that of the cute little Asian daughter Wen. She was not given a significant role. Therefore, she had little screen -time, and with the screen time she had, she gave an okay performance.

Finally, the gay couple is played by Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge. Their performance was good too. Their role became intense after Leonard told them that he needed their family to stop the apocalypse. As expected, they did not let us down.

Cinematography: the cinematography is good, and the camerawork, that is, camera angles, movements, and positioning, are great with fantastic wilderness settings and supreme angle work.

While the cinematography is good, the plot is simple. You could see the twist coming from a mile away, and the action scenes were slow, horrible, and poorly choreographed.

Rather than add some complexity to the film, Knock at the Cabin uses flashbacks doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Themes: One of the themes of this film is One for many. According to the film, an apocalypse was supposed to happen, and the only way to stop it, as seen in the visions, was for Eric and Andrew to choose between sacrificing one of themselves. Will they make the difficult choice? If they do, who will be offered, it the little Wan?

DID YOU KNOW?

According to IMDB, the strangers are each wearing a different colored shirt. Leonard (Dave Bautista) is wearing white, Redmond (Rupert Grint) is wearing red, Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird is wearing yellow, and Adriane (Abby Quinn) is wearing blue.

Each color represents their portrayal of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: white for Guidance, red for Malice, yellow for Healing, and blue for Nurturing. If you look at Andrew’s (Ben Aldridge) tee shirt, it has elements of each of those colors, hinting that he would be the one to survive.

CONCLUSION

How I would have loved it if this film had more complexity. How I would have loved it if this film had better character development.

The storyline and characters in this film had a lot of potentials, but unfortunately, every situation is straightforward and predictable, all the way to the final scene. What puzzles me about this film is that, despite its intriguing idea, it only accomplishes a little with it.

Knock at the Cabin is a mystery film with a good director, good performance, and great potential to become a horror film to be talked about for a long while. It has some horror content, but it is not as scary as I expected. The horror is shallow.

In my opinion, a 15-20 minute scenario outside the Cabin to introduce the characters would have done the film so much good.

Knock at the Cabin is rated R for violence and language.

You can watch Knock at the Cabin (2023) on Apple TV, Vudu, and Prime Video.

Similar genre – M3GAN(2023).

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