I seemed to have missed the release of the trailer for M Night Shyamalan’s “Knock at the Cabin.” It’s amassed 10 million views on YouTube in just four days.
Shyamalan is a brand. His name alone being stamped on a trailer can bring asses to seats. In his latest film, the India-born, Philadelphia-raised filmmaker riffs again on a “Twilight Zone”-like premise.
The plot revolves around two married men spending a weekend at a cabin, with their adopted daughter, who are suddenly attacked by a group of mysterious people (Dave Bautista, Rupert Grint, Nikki Amuka-Bird). The group says that they’ve had visions/dreams telling them that either one of the husbands or their daughter must be killed or else the apocalypse will happen and the world will end. Even more crushing, it has to be One of the husbands or their daughter that to do the killing. Are these people insane or is this real and must they do the sacrificial killing to prevent an apocalypse?
You can hate on the guy all you want, but, at some point, Shyamalan was known as the director who gave us "The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable." As far as I'm concerned, those two films justify his existence in the cinematic realm, but he also peaked with those two releases.
"The Village" and "Signs" weren't half-bad either. Of course, following those, Shyamalan went on a deep dive of mediocrity; "Lady in the Water," and "The Happening," two unwatchable projects that signaled, at the time, the possible end of his reign as the heir of Hitchcock/Spielberg.
Ever since those six films, with his signature style stamped all over them, Shyamalan has been dabbling mostly in Hollywood claptrap that has none of the carefully calibrated voice he created between 1999-2008: "After Earth," and "The Last Airbender" completely crushed his and our souls.
These films affected the latter part of his moviemaking career and enhanced his status as a has-been filmmaker. Why would a studio trust him with a big project ever again? However, this dire part of his career sparked a fresh new creative freedom in the filmmaker, one that none of us saw coming.
He made his most "watchable" film in quite some time with 2015's low-budget creepfest "The Visit," a film that could scare you and, at the same time, have you chuckling to no ends. It was a successful venture into genre niche filmmaking. I just wish he had made more of those.
The box-office comeback, however, came two years after “The Visit” with "Split," which had James McAvoy playing a man with dissociative identity disorder, he had 23 personalities with his body chemistry making him switch, at any moment, to another identity.
“Split" ended with a major reveal, a connection to his earlier work, more specifically "Unbreakable," which gave way to a new phase for the filmmaker. “Glass” was the sequel, it seems, nobody wanted. A terribly misguided project that set back Shyamalan’s supposed comeback. Then there was 2021’s “Old.” Now. Shyamalan is officially back in a rut.
The guys over at Cahiers du Cinema can’t get enough of Shyamalan, he is, after all, what you’d qualify as an auteur, but the quality just isn’t up to par anymore. Maybe “Knock at the Cabin,” which is set to hit theaters on February 3, 2023, could turn out to be a pleasant surprise.