M Night Shyamalan’s ‘Knock at the Cabin’ is Still Under Embargo, But…

I’m kind of positive on it. It’s a taut and propulsive thriller that manages — for the most part — to restrain Shyamalan’s worst filmmaking impulses.

I’ve always looked forward to the next M Night Shyamalan movie, even though I seem to constantly be disappointed by the end result, but not this time. It’s a mini-comeback for him.

In the age of Marvel, it’s kind of hard to dump on him. At least he keeps trying new original ideas. Yes, Shyamalan is a brand. His name alone being stamped on a trailer can fill seats. In his latest film, the India-born, Philadelphia-raised filmmaker riffs again on a “Twilight Zone”-like premise.

The plot revolves around a gay couple spending a weekend at a cabin with their adopted daughter, and 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 men or their daughter that does 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 one point he was known as the filmmaker 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 worst thing to have happened to Shyamalan were critics proclaiming him to be the heir of Spielberg. Remember that infamous Newsweek Magazine cover with the headline “The Next Spielberg”? THAT was the beginning of his dethronement.

Regardless, the guys over at Cahiers du Cinema can’t get enough of Shyamalan. He is, after all, what you’d qualify as an auteur, and they’ll get a real kick out of “Knock at the Cabin,” which is set to hit theaters on February 3, 2023.

I’ll have a more thorough write-up on it when the embargo lifts.