While vacationing, a girl and her parents are taken hostage by armed strangers who demand that the family make a choice to avert the apocalypse.
Chuck says:
When I hear people – teenagers mostly – start to pick apart a film, I do my best to remind them that logic has no place in the movies. There’s an unwritten contract between the audience and the filmmaker, the suspension of disbelief that’s required by the viewer in order to accept whatever situation the story presents. Each film sets up its own logic, which can be stretched, turned, or bent but it can never, ever be broken. Once a filmmaker goes back on the laws set up in their world, then the nitpicking can begin.
Night Shyamalan’s movies operate on this principle more than most because of the way they are constructed. Intent on surprising us, the director feels compelled to string along the viewer with an absurd premise that often has us asking questions along the way, wondering about the outlandish situation we’re witnessing. We tend to give Shyamalan a bit more rope due to the promise of being knocked back on our heels by the twist endings he’s become known for. Usually, our patience is rewarded; when it is not, it’s due to the director not adhering to the logic he’s established, hoping we’re so caught up in the story, we won’t notice.
Such is the case with his latest, “Knock at the Cabin,” an adaptation of Paul Tremblay’s “The Cabin at the End of the World,” which begins with a solid enough premise but squanders it thanks to the illogical behavior of its main characters. Solid performances and brisk pacing keep us hooked, allowing us to give Shyamalan the benefit of the doubt, a trust he ultimately squanders.
A rustic cabin, blooming flowers, and a nearby lake is the bucolic setting in which the action opens, precocious six-year-old Wen (Kristen Cui) is alone, catching grasshoppers she deposits in a make-shift terrarium. Out of nowhere, she’s approached by Leonard (a very good Dave Bautista), an imposing but gentle man who says he wants to be the young girl’s friend. Her initial hesitance gives way to trust, thanks to his soon-to-disappear tactful behavior. This is shattered when three others arrive, armed, and Leonard tells Wen that she and her two daddies will have to make some dire decisions today.
The confusion the parents, Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge), experience soon gives way to panic when Leonard and his cohorts, Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Ardiane (Abby Quinn), and Redmond (Rupert Grint) break in, accost them and tie them to chairs. Then, the insanity begins. Leonard tells them he and the other three have all had the same vision, that a series of cataclysmic events will ultimately result in the apocalypse and the only way to prevent this is for Eric, Andrew, and Em to choose among them which one will be sacrificed.
I’m not sure about you, but were I in this position, the first question I’d be asking is, “Why us?” This obvious query is never stated, but I guess I can forgive the script. I mean, if four seemingly unbalanced people showed up in my living room and related to me this bit of hokum, I might reason that asking them a sane question is an exercise in futility. Fine, but when Eric and Andrew refuse to make a decision, something happens between the four intruders that defies all logic and seemingly present a solution to the overarching problem that is never acknowledged.
I walked out of the theater wondering if I had missed something or if I was making too much out of a narrative blip that didn’t seem to matter to others I spoke to. I suppose I should just turn over in my mind the theme of the piece, that it is often better to cling to faith and hope than give in to nihilism and despair. However, Shyamalan’s films invite this sort of scrutiny; if his intent is to string along the audience in order to provide an out-of-left-field surprise, the logic of his stories has to be airtight. Ultimately, “Cabin” is revealed to have been built on a flimsy narrative foundation.
2.5/4.0
