Knock at the Cabin

Tied-Up in NIMBY-land

or

What Would Jesus Do?
 

One approaches a new film by M. Night Shyamalan with a sort of dread, not the sort of dread he likes to weave in to the frame so that you have to "holster" your soda and popcorn, lest there be a jump-scare. No. It's the fear of the unknown...especially given Night's track record. Will this be one of "his" good ones? Or, will it all go (as they narrate in those TrueCrime TV shows) "horribly...horribly wrong."

 

If you haven't seen the trailers for Knock at the Cabin (they seemed omnipresent), it's pretty basic "Funny Games" kind of material, but played (I guess you could say) "straight". A gay couple, Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and their daughter Wen (Kristen Cui) are vacationing at an isolated cabin in the woods. Four people (Dave Bautista, Rupert Grint, Nikki Amuka-Bird, and Abby Quinn) come out of those woods, ask to be let in, and when they're refused, they break into the house, concuss one of the dads and overpowers another one, tie them up, and then ask them to hear them out. They have something very important to say.

Leonard (Bautista) starts with a preamble: "If you could look inside, you'd see my heart is broken because of what I have to do."

 

Doesn't. Sound. Promising. As if tying them up was going to appeal to their sympathy.

Now, straight up, before we going into anything potentially spoilerific, let me say that Dave Bautista is the Most Valuable Player in this thing. Everybody is good in this, even—and particularly little Kristen Cui—but Bautista really sells the premise. He's done very well for himself in previous films, but his Leonard is what makes you believe in the absurdity of the whole concept. His man-mountain is in agony over the role he finds himself playing and makes you believe that he HAS to play it out or the consequences will be cataclysmic. Played any differently and Leonard would have come across as just another Q-ANON supporter shooting up a pizza parlor ("The intel on this wasn't 100%"). But, Bautista's sweating, haunted Leonard, his voice soothing and breaking has just enough weird anti-energy to make you keep watching, even as your better sense or Doubting Thomas is telling you "...wait...wait..."

"What he is about to do" is warn this family that there is an apocalypse coming.  "The cities will drown. A terrible plague will descend. The sky will fall like glass and God's fingers will scorch the Earth." 7 Billion people will perish. But, this family...this family...can prevent it. All they have to do is kill one of their family-members. And it'll stop. It will all stop. There's no "agenda" here. It's not because they're a "gay couple" with an adopted child. They're not on some "anti-woke" crusade. The four were brought to this cabin...because they all saw it in their "visions." They didn't see any people. They just saw the cabin in...their "visions."

Their "visions." And then they met on the internet. And compared stories. And realized...to their horror, mind you...that everything lined up, and they had to act to prevent Armageddon. So, if you wouldn't mind, decide which of you are going to die. Or everybody dies.

At this point, I began giggling. I knew what I would do. Question everything. I wouldn't care if they showed me the coasts flooding on CNN (which, by the way, they do), I'd think these people were total nutters and do everything in my power to overcome them before they did anything to my family.

But, I really began giggling when I started thinking "What Would Jesus Do?" and the answer was "where's the cross?" The Lamb would have a better scope on what was really happening, of course—whether it was really happening—he'd probably gotten The Memo. But, what do these two guys—who already feel a little persecuted in their daily life—do when confronted with this terrible choice? What would anybody do—if they weren't "bearing crosses" from Society—when confronted by this choice-that-would've-driven-Solomon crazy? I think they'd be very un-Christ-like. I think they'd want to see the stats on "the intel."

But, who knows, really? The oceans are rising—(which has been denied, but are YOU thinking of buying ocean-front property?—and we just went through a plague (which has also been denied). Anybody can come up with reasons why they're so damned sure about not believing the pandemic, or not wearing masks, or saying nobody's landed on the Moon, or the Earth is flat, or Donald Trump won an election that (in reality) he didn't, and even be so potent about it, they would do things that a rational, thinking person would consider "crazy." You don't need to be a "shaman", you just need to hold a grudge. And ignore "Evidence."

So, this little movie. I wouldn't ascribe it as a "woke vs. bigot" argument (although I doubt Ron de Santis would watch it)—it's far too simplistic for that. But, I will note that the screenwriters—"Night" being one of them—changed the story (which featured something pretty grim, even for a movie about The Apocalypse) to tip the scales. Some might argue on the wrong side, but they're definitely tipped, perhaps to make it more a "Night" movie, but maybe more to put it squarely in the "ambiguous" category. Hitchcock did that once—in The Birds—and folks were ready to have him plucked for it, as audiences like to have things nice and neat and explained to them.

"The book did whaaaaaaa...?!"

 

But, I found myself leaving a theater with a grudging admiration for this movie for "going there," whatever its reasons.