Yes the Sixth Sense is that good. M. Night Shyamalan will never outdue his incredible first feature, but it’s not for lack of trying. Like all of his post Sixth movies, Shyamalan takes another terrific premise and clunkily tries to conjure the magic of that first film, only to come up short again. Shyamalan really tried this time, bringing Ron Weasley into the movie.
7ish year old Wen (Kristen Cui) is outside catching grasshoppers on a sunny vacation day at a remote cabin. She gets a bit startled when a giant man named Leonard (Dave Bautista) comes out of the woods, and starts talking to her. Frightened, she goes inside to daddy Eric (Jonathan Groff) and daddy Andrew (Ben Aldridge), who lock the doors and windows. However, Leonard now has 3 other “colleagues” (Rupert Grint, Abby Quinn, Nikki Amuka-Bird) with weapons, ready to tear down the doors and “talk” to the family inside.
The reason to watch Knock at the Cabin is Dave Bautista. Even though Dwayne Johnson and John Cena eat up most of the post WWE attention, it is Bautista who really challenges himself as an actor, becoming more appealing with each performance. This is as far from Drax as you can get. The opening scene is him talking to Wen outside of her vacation cabin, and it ripples with a weird mixture of high tension and empathy emanating from Bautista. While it’s an ensemble, the former WWE star uses that weird mixture of empathy and threat of imposing brute force to confuse Eric and Andrew, and keep the audience’s attention on the goings on inside that cabin after the knocking.
Other than the magnificent Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan movies usually have a similar trajectory: a trajectory Knock at the Cabin follows to a T. The opening is strongest, because we know so little. That’s when Shyamalan is his best, crafting an atmosphere of ephemeral dread as the audience is trying to figure out what’s going on and when the twist is coming. Next: phase 2, the world building and plot mechanics. This is usually a 50/50 proposition. Knock at the Cabin is more 35/65. The world building succeeds on Shyamalan’s best gift: his ability to generate tension and a foreboding atmosphere. When it comes to the plot details, this is where his stories start to fall apart. In order to get to the end, we have to start to learn things about the world we’re living in. Shyamalan isn’t exactly known for his dialogue, except when it’s really bad; so the more talking the characters do a little air is let out of the balloon. As a result, the more we usually learn, the more the audience starts to check out, as the infinite possibilities of the story become more finite, and usually clunkily put together. And that’s why everyone is so hung up on the phase 3: Shyamalan twist. If it’s great, the movie reclaims some of its initial value; if it’s not, the movie falls apart. The twist in Knock at the Cabin falls for me unfortunately closer to the latter, kind of shushing away logic gaps in the story for a rushed ending that thinks its better than it actually is.
Either way, props to Dave Bautista. I definitely had you pegged as thug #3 in a bunch of movies who gets killed before the big boss fight for a lead actor in an action movie. You’ve proven at this point you’re more talented than that designation. I look forward to seeing where your career goes from here sir, in what I hope is more daring genres and choices as you put your WWE peers Johnson and Cena to shame, especially comic book wise. Drax over Black Adam and the Peacemaker all day everyday.