Movie Review: Knock at the Cabin

 

Michael's Movie Grade: D-

This film fails to live up to its interesting premise and instead comes off as simply bland and surprisingly for a M. Night Shyamlan movie kind of boring. 

The main problem with this movie is apparent from the very beginning. As soon as the film starts, the story is already underway with no real set up. The problem we have had no time to be introduced to or get these characters. Over the course of the film, we learn very little about these characters. All these characters have strictly one-note personalities and because of this they never feel real to us and we have no emotional connection to this story. That is a shame because the premise of this movie is one that should be highly emotional. A family (two dads and their adopted daughter) is told they must choose between sacrifice one of themselves or the whole world will die. This premise has the ability to be something highly emotional, but if the characters never feel real than none of it holds any weight. The result then is surprisingly dull. This is not helped by the fact that this film has little of the twists and turns that are associated with director M. Night Shyamalan's movies. Because of this the story simply becomes repetitive. Though there is a sense of dread and atmosphere in some the early scenes, without the twists and turns, there is little to keep this feeling going through the rest of the film. With this the film really drags for much of its runtime. The movie also tries to delve into deeper themes, but in the end really doesn't say much more than homophobia exists and is a bad thing. Even that is told in a very clumsy way, through obvious and uninteresting dialogue  that often feels forced into the film. 

The only things that really work about this movie are the atmosphere of the early scenes and the good performances for the cast (especially Dave Bautista). Other than that, this movie is just a waste of time.