Ty Watches "Knock at the Cabin"

Last weekend my wife and I went back to the theater and saw "Knock at the Cabin". I have not been inside a theater for a movie since early 2022 when I saw "Everything Everywhere All at Once". My wife had the day off and wanted to go out for lunch and a movie. She picked lunch and I picked the movie. She was also pretty adamant that we went to a theater. It was cool. There was us and two other, older couples for a noon showing.

I have wanted to see "Knock at the Cabin" since I first saw a trailer about two or three weeks ago. I have liked, or at least been into, the past couple M Night Shyamalan movies. "Glass" wasn't great, but at least all the "superheroes" in Shyamalan's previous movies got together and made something that had stuff that worked. "Old" crumbled at the end, but up to that point it kept my attention. And "Split" is a very good movie, full stop. So "Knock at the Cabin" had won a place in my brain. I wanted to see this movie. I am a big Dave Bautista fan and to see him playing this type of character really piqued my interest. He is usually used as Drax or as a big guy that is there for comedy relief. I did like his character in "Glass Onion", and his small role in "Blade Runner 2049" is extremely memorable. Those are about the only time he has ventured away from typecasting and they both worked. So seeing him playing this soft spoken doomsdayer type really pulled me in. I then read what the movie was about  and that made me even more amped.

The long and short is a family goes on a vacation and they are met by four people who say they have to kill one of their own or the apocalypse will occur. Pretty easy premise to follow. It is like a thriller version of "Sophie's Choice". Bautista is the lead. Rupert Grint, Nikki Amuka-Bird and Abby Quinn play the doomsday people. They each explain that they have had visions and they came together to try and stop the apocalypse. Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge and Kristen Cui are the family that has to decide if they will live alone with the three of them as the world ends, or if they will make an awful sacrifice to save the world.

I really wanted to love this movie going in. I had high hopes. The movie got solid reviews as well, so I was hyped. The movie, for me, fell a little flat. There are things I love in this movie. The creepiness, the quietness, the sacrificing, the stories being told, the tension, that stuff worked and worked very well at points. Groff and Aldrigde played great off each other. They had wonderful chemistry and they were tremendous in this movie. The little girl was exceptional. She has a very bright future. And Dave Bautista was phenomenal. He was quiet and spoke very matter of factly and that made him even more frightening. Even a good amount of the twists and turns work very well. But it was some of the other stuff around the movie that didn't totally hit for me. The twist was predictable. For a director like Shyamalan, even in his bad movies, the twists usually work and I have a hard time seeing them coming. This one was pretty easy to follow. Some of the disasters and diseases were a little on the nose. They pulled a lot from COVID and modern news. I think I wanted a fresher take. Some of the stories the doomsayers told were familiar and tired.I get why they were inserted into the movie but I wanted a different point of view.

I think mostly, for me, the biggest problem was my expectations were far too high. I should have lowered them a bit. My wife said she liked the movie okay, but it was a little flat at points. I wish I had gone in with her point of view.

"Knock at the Cabin" is an okay movie with a great performance from Bautista. But I wish I had waited until it was streaming to watch. At least I got to have a date with my wife and that made it worth it. But the movie just didn't fully hit me the way I was hoping it would. 

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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