Knock At The Cabin movie review: One of M Night Shyamalan’s best in a long time

Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge), Wen’s two daddies, are relaxing on the back porch when the little girl bursts in, panic-stricken. Four strangers (Amuka-Bird, Aby Quin, and Grint apart from Bautista) carrying strange looking weapons force their way in, and once inside, demand a terrible sacrifice from the trio. At stake is nothing less than the end of the world.

End-of-the-world tales can also turn trope-y, but here Shyamalan uses homophobia to hang a peg on: to begin with, the couple refuse to believe the four strangers who are more weepy than scary (we get to know why, by and by). They think it’s all a delusional yarn. And then they are convinced that they are being targeted for their sexuality, and given a few flashes of how the outside world has treated them, including an icy sequence featuring a set of parents, you believe them.

That’s also because warnings of apocalypse keep cropping up, but the world goes on, doesn’t it? The way in which Shyamalan, who gives himself a blink-and-miss part in the movie, and gets us to begin suspecting something may be terribly wrong, is predictable. And a few sequences, especially when the weird tools are being put to grisly use, turn repetitive. But on the whole, the film keeps us engaged. Little girls and grasshoppers are hard to resist.

Knock At The Cabin movie cast: Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Kristen Cui, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Aby Quin, Rupert Grint

Knock At The Cabin movie director: M. Night Shyamalan

Knock At The Cabin movie rating: 2.5 stars