Review | Knock at the Cabin movie review: Dave Bautista leads M. Night Shyamalan’s thought-provoking apocalyptic thriller

M. Night Shyamalan’s psychological horror film follows a same-sex couple and their daughter, who are threatened by four visitors to their cabin

Rupert Grint’s nastiness as one of them will shock Harry Potter fans, and Dave Bautista impresses in one of the director’s most satisfying films in years

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(From left) Abby Quinn, Dave Bautista and Rupert Grint in a still from Knock at the Cabin (category IIB), directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

Published: 2:00am, 2 Feb 2023Updated: 3:39am, 2 Feb 2023

4/5 stars

You can always trust writer-director M. Night Shyamalan to lay down the film equivalent of an infectious musical hook.

His last film, Old, saw holidaymakers on a beach ageing rapidly across a day. This time, he posits another vacation from hell – quite literally – as a quartet of doom-mongers arrive on the doorstep of a family of three with the request to end them all.

That Shyamalan and his co-writers have adapted this from Paul Tremblay’s book The Cabin at the End of the World should give some indication that this is no ordinary social call.

The four strangers, brought together after experiencing the same apocalyptic visions, have been told to knock on the cabin door where Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge), and their adopted daughter Wen (Kristen Cui), are relaxing.

Leading this pack is Leonard (Guardians of the Galaxy’s Dave Bautista), a bespectacled teacher who speaks urgently but with intelligence. He’s certainly calmer than Redmond (Rupert Grint), a gas company employee who is thoroughly agitated by their mission.