Knock at the Cabin

Universal Pictures | Release Date: February 3, 2023

5.8	USER SCORE Mixed or average reviews based on 98 Ratings

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GameBossFeb 21, 2023

The main issue is the complete lack of mystery, that MNS is known for: you are absolutely sure about what will happen, who will die, and if the apocalypse actually exists or not. Everything else is good, the camera is in place, and the actorsThe main issue is the complete lack of mystery, that MNS is known for: you are absolutely sure about what will happen, who will die, and if the apocalypse actually exists or not. Everything else is good, the camera is in place, and the actors are doing their job, but the lack of any uncertainty is just boring.… Expand

3 of 3 users found this helpful30

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chevkochFeb 23, 2023

A disappointingly linear stage piece that rides on a shallow mystery which inner workings remain unexplained. Everything in the end is simply the way as it has been presented. Violence that does not serve to make the story more interesting,A disappointingly linear stage piece that rides on a shallow mystery which inner workings remain unexplained. Everything in the end is simply the way as it has been presented. Violence that does not serve to make the story more interesting, hints at divine reasons for the apocalypse a mere exercise in vacuity. Utterly bland.… Expand

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

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hnestlyontheslyFeb 5, 2023

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. KatC is a livewire act of dumb filmmaking. Someone needs to stop M Night from doing this. He shouldn't be allowed to gaslight us with half-formed movies anymore and every time he does we lose a little bit of our dignity, a little bit of our standards erode.

Look, I am not someone unsympathetic to the art of creepypasta doomsday predictions. There's a game that I've played with Wife before, usually when we're on vacation and I feel like she's getting too comfortable: how many times could you hear the same song out in the wild before you started questioning your reality? We took a walk through the park by the beach once and heard the same song from two or three different passersby, on a boom box, blasting out of a boat, through the earphones of some jogger, prompting us to wonder if we'd encountered the same radio station looping a popular song over the course of the hour. I keep a little news clip on my desktop, one that I at this very moment am wary of sharing because of 1) how it will make me look maybe a little bit unwell and 2) how unwell I'll feel if suddenly my corroborating evidence suddenly vanishes: a screenshot of an article that's clearly a typo about deforestation, but which looks like something that was accidentally posted from the future into the present, a kind of glitch in the Matrix that tests your ability not to be weirded out. The article is still up there, still hasn't been fixed after more than a year as of this writing, which somehow makes it weirder.

Which is to say, I'm game for some weird end of days stuff. Sign me up, hey I'll even bring my anxieties about time travel along for the ride if you let me. This movie was not an invitation into the uncanny. The deep exhale you take because the film begins exactly where one would hope, no preamble, just cold hard home invasion from the trailer, doesn't actually accelerate the plot into something new and unexpected. Part of the immense disappointment, the deep shame, palpable within everyone who looked around for confirmation of their poor decisions at the cut to black, is that there, as far as I can tell, is no depth to this story at all. It is entirely concept: what if doomsdayers happened to be right one particular time? Could they convince a normie that it was real? The real monkey wrench that you're waiting for, the hiccup that's going to send you reeling? Minor. Barely an inconvenience. Our access to verification that the End Times are nigh is freely available on cable television. The set of compounding coincidences seem fairly compelling by the third "plague" released by the Horsemen. Rather than leave some strategic ambiguity, as the term is used in foreign policy, M Night and his goons resort to some heavy-handed realism. There is some dispute among Friends on this, one maintains that the "twist" is that it's all real, but I think anyone who's been subjected to the trailer is already prepared for some of even the most final scenes of the movie. The twist I detect, if it can be called that, is that the victims have already encountered some of the Horsemen previously, which is, hey, not a terrible complication, but also seems a little bit sidelined by the fact that so many bad things are happening in such quick succession. Wife, during our quick debrief at the end of the night, asked if it felt at all like Ready or Not ("I maintain that was a good movie," she reiterated just now), where the end's twist really does put into question and complicate some of the comedy of earlier in the movie. "It was just 'everything's real, deal with it'," I said, deflated. "Was any of it redeemable?" I asked, distraught, as Friends scattered to the winds in the parking lot, and what I think I meant was, would it have been better if all the bad things had been a little... smaller? I suppose? If a nascent pandemic had come on the heels of a few aircraft failures during an especially bad day of war? If, in other words, it had been February 2020? But that's White Noise, that's Don't Look Up.

The slow disaster that we can't see coming because it's creeping up on us so slowly or we're so blinkered, so consumed in our own drama, we don't even notice. Maybe that would've been a trite commentary, but instead, we got a crisis of faith plot on training wheels, which, as one Friend put it, at no point ever trusted the audience to understand nuance.

I'm frustrated at myself for thinking this could be more than the sum of its parts. I'm frustrated that I thought an end credits scene could redeem the first ninety minutes of it. I'm frustrated but you don't need to be. I had a Friend who I invited who never showed up and he dodged a bullet, which is more than I can say for any of the characters in this movie.… Expand

6 of 7 users found this helpful61

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Brent_MarchantFeb 4, 2023

Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan truly is a filmmaker who has lost his way. The once-promising auteur has delivered yet another in a string of cinematic disappointments with this long-winded, overly talky, patently obvious, unsuspensefulWriter-director M. Night Shyamalan truly is a filmmaker who has lost his way. The once-promising auteur has delivered yet another in a string of cinematic disappointments with this long-winded, overly talky, patently obvious, unsuspenseful account of an unexpected visit to a vacationing family (a pair of same-sex parents and their young adopted daughter) by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (no, I’m not giving anything away here – that’s apparent from the trailer, let alone the excessively delayed revelation in the film). The members of this alternative household are given the option by their unforeseen visitors to sacrifice one of themselves in order to forestall the end of the world, an inevitability sure to pass if they fail to comply. And, if they refuse, the bringers of doom will themselves be sacrificed, after which various calamities will be unleashed against humanity. As intriguing as this premise is, though, the players in this story, quite ironically, talk this possibility to death, leaving viewers wishing for something to happen to make the production even moderately interesting (talk about yawn city). In addition to the endless dialogue, audiences are fed a diet of cheesy, sometimes-implausible special effects, gratuitous violence (even if only by implication), and, surprisingly, the lack of a twist, one of this director’s signature artistic tricks. What’s more, actor Dave Bautista, as capable as he might be in any number of supporting roles, simply isn’t up to carrying the lead here; he’s just not a strong enough performer for that. But what’s most troubling are the themes permeating this work, even if unintentional or only cautionary in nature. The “be very afraid of everything” message runs strong and deep, as does the picture’s conventional fire and brimstone religiosity. Even its well-meaning support of the gay community boomerangs on itself and ultimately reinforces (albeit inadvertently) stereotypically homophobic sentiments and outlooks. At this point, given the filmmaker’s track record, I’m puzzled that any backers would want to continue giving money to Shyamalan to keep making movies. It’s been a long time since he’s made anything worth watching, and this offering merely continues a trend that’s been going on for years now.… Expand

5 of 6 users found this helpful51

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heloheFeb 8, 2023

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. What kind of **** adaption is this? Did Shyamalan even read and understand the book? The whole story is supposed very ambiguous. Wen is supposed to die for nothing. And they are not supposed to choose anyone in the end. The whole book is a story of the absurdity and cruelty of the idea of a god. This movie clearly did not get this. This feels like a christian apologist marathon. In the book they do not make a sacrifice in the end because they do not give a **** about a cruel god who would make them do something so messed up.… Expand

8 of 10 users found this helpful82

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TyrakFeb 3, 2023

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. M Night Shyamalan's big twist this time is that he took the ending of the book and made it terrible.

Like, I'm not kidding, this movie follows the plot of the book it's based on almost *religiously* (hah), until the point where the original story had a major twist that lead into an interesting and dramatic end with a thoughtful message. This adaptation removes that twist, and replaces it with... Being predictable? I guess that's the twist?? That it's got a **** ending this time???

I genuinely don't know what the point of this film was supposed to be, but whatever it was, it was depressing and unsatisfying. If the concept sounds interesting, just read the book I guess. This ain't it.

(... Dave Bautista was an inspired casting choice, though, so he alone gets points on this one.)… Expand

4 of 5 users found this helpful41

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kpaulFeb 23, 2023

This movie is pretentious and exhausting. Worst kind of woke. Characters making unrealistic choices, no one is relatable, and goals aren't believable. Acting is great but with such bad material in such a bad vehicle, it's not noticeable.This movie is pretentious and exhausting. Worst kind of woke. Characters making unrealistic choices, no one is relatable, and goals aren't believable. Acting is great but with such bad material in such a bad vehicle, it's not noticeable.

Dialog is stilted and unreliable. Angles and cuts are jarring and is more disengaging then the story and characters.

As someone who's been trying to make a living as a filmmaker for 20 years, It's mind boggling that something like this gets made.… Expand

2 of 3 users found this helpful21

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DatpinoMar 5, 2023

Woke hot garbage. Someone cast a crazy eyed lady. Sadly hollywood is incapable of writing a quality story anymore. Instead there is just a reliance on violence to drive the nonsense vomited as a script. M Night is a goner. Lost to anWoke hot garbage. Someone cast a crazy eyed lady. Sadly hollywood is incapable of writing a quality story anymore. Instead there is just a reliance on violence to drive the nonsense vomited as a script. M Night is a goner. Lost to an early woke death.

Leftist propaganda only proving how horrible the left is. Completely incapable of thinking about anyone except themselves while even billions burn and die. Absolutely sickening… Expand

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

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HonestReviews66Mar 10, 2023

Woke garbage within 3 minutes. Propaganda is banned in my household. Nobody cares that the coloured girl has two dads.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

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