Recent Movie: Knock at the Cabin

Twelve years ago, Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard released The Cabin in the Woods, a metafictional horror comedy seeking to answer the question of just why photogenic young people on idyllic nature getaways keep encountering eldritch horrors who pick them off one by one. There's a lot in the film that hasn't aged well—the meta gags were getting tired almost as soon as they were made, and more recent work, such as the films of Jordan Peele, has done a much better job of blending horror and humor and exploring the roots of the genre's core tropes. But the basic idea of the film—a shadowy organization who are deliberately sacrificing the vacationers in order to spare humanity from the wrath of the old ones—remains strong, arguably stronger than the comedic wrapping that surrounds it. As I wrote in my review, by the end of the movie you find yourself regretting the time spent leading up to this revelation, and wishing the film had started from it as its premise.

M. Night Shyamalan's new film Knock at the Cabin feels like a finger on the monkey's paw curling to give me my wish. It doesn't even bother introducing us to its designated victims—young couple Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and their adorable daughter Wen (Kristen Cui)—before establishing the invasion of their lakeside cabin by a foursome that includes Redmond (Rupert Grint), Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Adriane (Abby Quinn), and their leader, Leonard (Dave Bautista). And no sooner has that happened than Leonard explains that none of them want to be there or to hurt their captives. They've all had visions showing them that unless the family choose to sacrifice one of their own (suicide or murder by someone outside the family don't count) humanity will be doomed. Each time the invaders' demand that the captives make a sacrifice is refused, they kill off one of their own, which triggers the next phase in the apocalypse.

This is all established within the film's first half hour, after which there's really no place for the story to go except in circles. The captives, mainly Andrew, argue with their attackers, insisting that they are suffering from a shared delusion and that the reports of calamity on the news are fake or coincidental. The invaders tearfully insist that they take no pleasure in the violence they've committed, but that their visions of the coming apocalypse are real. Another film might have tried to create some ambiguity on this point, but this one makes it clear almost immediately that the choice presented to the captives, and the necessity of a sacrifice, are real. Bautista, who has rightly been deployed as the film's main draw in its marketing, plays impressively against type as the genuinely gentle, kind-hearted Leonard, but neither he nor any of the other characters are developed into actual people, whose looming death we might feel genuine regret about.

The closest the film comes to an interesting idea is Andrew's insistence that even if he believed the invaders' story, he wouldn't sacrifice his family to save a world that has repeatedly rejected and victimized him. Almost the only thing we learn about him and Eric in the infrequent flashbacks that pepper the movie is the fact that they've had to fight to be recognized as a couple and a family—we see them rejected by Andrew's parents, having to lie to authorities in China before being allowed to adopt Wen, and attacked by a stranger for having the audacity to have an intimate conversation in public. But this is something the film gestures at only half-heartedly. We're never in any doubt that Eric and Andrew will eventually choose sacrifice over selfishness—it's even fairly clear which one of them will choose to die.

Which, when it comes down to it, renders the film pointless. Whatever its flaws, The Cabin in the Woods recognized that the only rational, emotionally interesting response to its premise was rage. That a system that requires the sacrifice of an innocent in order to keep the world turning is a stupid one, and a god that would demand it is an evil one. That the people who enable that god, even if their ultimate goal is laudable, are enabling evil. The moment in which heroine Dana considers killing her friend Marty in order to save the world is one in which she surrenders to evil, even if that is still probably what she should have done. You might not like an ending to a story in which a good person chooses themselves over the rest of humanity, but it at least demands something from you—to recognize the rage of young people who realize that their elders would rather throw away their lives than do anything to change the status quo; or the affront of queer people who have spent their lives being told that their love and their family aren't real, only to learn that actually, they're real enough to die for the rest of us.

I haven't read the Paul Tremblay novel on which Knock at the Cabin is based, but the story that Shyamalan has made of it does the opposite of making demands on its audience. It offers us cheap consolation—don't worry, some innocent will lay down their life to save the rest of us from our mistakes. It even suggests that the system that demands this sacrifice is a benevolent one, as when Eric begins to have visions that show him that his family will endure his death. The film clearly expects us to see his sacrifice as moving and inspiring, but what actually shows up on screen is mawkish and banal—exactly the kind of morally vacant sentimentality that made me stop watching Shyamalan movies years ago, only for reviewers to turn around and insist that actually, he's gotten good again.

Watching Knock at the Cabin, one can't help but think of the many recent films that have used similar plot elements to far better effect. The home invasion that turns out to be something entirely different is a core component of Us. The designated human sacrifice trying to persuade her attackers that they're in the grips of a delusion was used to tremendous effect in Ready or Not. The family forced to choose which one among their number will die in order to prevent a greater calamity is the premise of The Killing of a Sacred Deer. One things that these movies, as well as The Cabin in the Woods, have in common is anger. They are stories about realizing that the system you move in is diseased, designed to sacrifice the weak so that the strong can keep going. Knock at the Cabin is a bad film because it's badly made, but it's also bad because it expects to look at this system, and feel happy about it.