Knock at the Cabin

Now that Knock at the Cabin is available on Peacock, we can wrestle with one of the biggest questions in M. Night Shyamalan's latest.

By the time the closing credits hit, Knock at the Cabin has answered most of the questions it has raised. Instead, the King sees “four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.” According to many Christian readings (though not necessarily Jewish readings, which is where the story originates), that fourth person is Jesus Christ, God in human form. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have their roots in the figurative language of Revelation, the final book in the Bible. After he and Andrew refuse Leonard’s first request to make a sacrificial choice, Eric watches as one of the quartet, the hateful Redmond ( In the climax of the novel, Wen is shot and killed while Eric and Andrew wrestle with Leonard for his gun. The story closes with Andrew and Eric choosing not to sacrifice one another, leaving the cabin to face whatever is out there. Furthermore, Eric has already suffered a concussion, having been knocked out during the first tussle with Leonard and the others. Leonard explains that he and the others have never met one another, but they’ve been receiving visions instructing them to come to that cabin and make a demand of the family living there. But because Wen did not choose to die, her death did not satisfy the demands of the universe or deity, and a sacrifice was still needed. But a similar thing happens in Signs and Lady in the Water. On one hand, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if Eric did see something supernatural in the mirror. That tension between faith and fact drives much of Knock at the Cabin, as Leonard and his comrades insist that they’ve come to Eric and Andrew, not willingly, but driven by a mysterious force.

Tremblay, Shyamalan, and the strangers aren't up front about the nature of the end of the world, only that it is coming, and on a long enough timescale they are ...

What makes them frightening, like the strangers in Knock at the Cabin, is that they are external and out of our control. If the beam were powerful enough, long lasting enough, and close enough, we wouldn’t live long enough to worry about cancer or respiratory disease. In their estimation, a large eruption would cover the surrounding area in several feet of ash, enough to crush houses and snuff out anything living. If one were to strike us from close by, however, we’d be in for a really bad (if brief) time of it. GRBs are caused by the collapse of massive stars or the collision of neutron stars or black holes; they are, without contest, the most powerful electromagnetic explosions in the universe. Tremblay, Shyamalan, and the strangers aren’t up front about the nature of the end of the world, only that it is coming, and on a long enough timescale they are right. If the same sort of event were to happen today, Wait around long enough and something is bound to come along and wipe our planet of the cosmic map. [Knock at the Cabin](https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/topic/knock-at-the-cabin) (now available on [digital](https://digitalmoviedeals.nbcuniversal.com/products/knock-at-the-cabin) and [Peacock](https://www.peacocktv.com/watch/asset/movies/knock-at-the-cabin/7dee330f-341c-3fd0-830a-fc2b16f23ce7)!). The star, filtered through the atmosphere, loses most of its most interesting features. Humanity is almost ready to cross asteroid impacts off of the list of potential world enders, but the universe has plenty of other weapons at its disposal. The visitors each carry a different makeshift weapon and tidings of the impending apocalypse.

Will there ever be a time when our expectations for Shyamalan-ish twists don't intrude upon our enjoyment of his films?

That’s a matter to be overcome not with one film (Old certainly didn’t do it) but a string of them, and Knock at the Cabin may be the first to divert, ever so slightly, from his long-held formula. Knock at the Cabin has enough going for it to warrant a watch. Eric, Andrew and Wen have to choose who gets it, and either Eric, Andrew or Wen has to do the killing. Andrew is the resident pragmatist who holds tight to the correlation-without-causation notion – the global tragedies they see on the news can’t possibly have anything to do with what happens in this cabin among a few folks who are naught but randos among a population of billions. He’s as strong a visual craftsman as ever, a master manipulator who toys with his audience with the winking acerbity of his idol Hitchcock. It’s a classic scenario for a character like Eric to endure a blow to the head and feel, you know, touched. After some vague comments from the abductors like “our choices make our destiny” and “it’s almost time,” Leonard explains what the eff is going on: Eric, Andrew and Wen are a family “chosen” for sacrifice, to benefit the greater good. Tremblay’s novel [The Cabin at the End of the World](https://www.amazon.com/Cabin-End-World-Novel/dp/0062679104?tag=decider08-20&asc_refurl=https://decider.com/2023/03/24/knock-at-the-cabin-streaming-movie-review/&asc_source=web), Twistmeister General Shyamalan once again has us questioning the reality of a narrative, this time with a story about a vacationing family held hostage by four individuals claiming the apocalypse is nigh, and they all have to work to do something about it, and it ain’t gonna be pleasant. Weirdos who tie up the two men and also sweep up the glass from the windows they broke to get inside, because they’re conscientious guests. Hopefully, it’ll become friends with the other grasshoppers in there, and isn’t a MAGA C.H.U.D. The Gist: Adorable little girl Wen (Kristen Cui) snatches a grasshopper, puts it in a jar and gives it a name. I dunno, man – this one gives me some heavy [The Happening](https://decider.com/movie/the-happening/) vibes, but the probability of this movie, or any movie for that matter, being worse than that is slim, right?

Caution: As you should expect from the title, this post contains major spoilers for the end of Knock at the Cabin. Fans of M. Night Shyamalan movies know that ...

The strangers are the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse. Phones start ringing to say that people have made it out of events alive, and it looks like the world is going on the way it should. One of them needs to sacrifice themselves (by choice) to save the world. It’s time to break the events down to be able to explain them. [Knock at the Cabin](https://hiddenremote.com/movies/) is now available to stream on Peacock. Knock at the Cabin could have been difficult to bring a twist since it was based on a book.

Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for Knock at the Cabin.There are a few things you need to know about the latest M. Night Shyamalan Movie, ...

To say that the world was really going to end and that the only way to stop it was to sacrifice yourself, is that something that should ever really be expected of them? This parting note is something that lingers and pushes beyond literal statements into something far more disturbing, revealing about the world we’ve built. The tragedy that Andrew and Wen experienced is then twofold. After suffering a concussion in the initial brawl in the cabin and being more devout than Andrew, Eric has come to believe that he must die to save the world. After sending her daughter away, Eric convinces Andrew that this is supposedly the only way and that he must do it. The moment, which is seemingly more straightforward than the novel’s ending, in which Eric and Andrew walked out into the world not knowing if it would be destroyed, also has a few different levels of thematic tension worth delving into .