Knock yourself out but, be warned, it’s dull
Twelve times a year, I stay up until midnight. Just so I can be there when the schedule refreshes and I find out which films I will be watching in the coming month.
Like some sort of demented Wordle addict, I stare at the screen as 11.59 flickers and becomes midnight – and then I start to read. And mostly what I’m looking for is one name. Shyamalan.
Because, as any film scribbler will tell you, when there’s an M Night Shyamalan on the big screen, it’s going to be a day you’ll at least remember.
Shyamalan hoved into view around the world in 1999 with The Sixth Sense. That was before anyone sober ever asked my opinion of a film. But even then, I knew The Sixth Sense was a bit special and this was a name worth remembering.
And Unbreakable, released the next year, seemed to confirm the promise. Seeing a genuinely smart excavation of the whole comic-book superhero genre was a breath of cool air and a pretty good time in more scenes than not.
And then the wheels fell off in a hurry. I know Signs has its fans, but by the time Mel Gibson worked out the interplanetary invaders could be driven off with a bucket of water and a baseball bat, I was too busy laughing to pay much notice to the theological metaphors buried there.
And likewise The Village. I’m one of those infuriating people who twigged immediately what the twist was – the only one it could be – and the rest of the film was a damp, humourless slog towards the inevitable.
For the past 15 or so years, the Shyamalan rollercoaster has kept right on. There’s The Lady In The
Water, which is a terrible film I just happen to adore to the marrow of my bones.
And there’s others – The Happening, Split and Glass – which I know are pretty good, but which bored me to tears and then had me falling out of my seat laughing at all the places where I was probably supposed to be frightened.
For all of these reasons, I always look forward to whatever Shyamalan does next.
And Knock at the Cabin, for us true Shyamalan heads, does not disappoint. If you’ve seen the overstuffed trailer, then you know the film is a home-invasion thriller – and that a quartet of doomsday cult members are holding Eric, Andrew and their infant daughter Wen hostage.
You’ll probably have also worked out that the cult members – led by a howlingly unlikely Dave Bautista – are demanding some sort of sacrifice from the family, otherwise the world will end.
So far, so Shyamalan. A scenario like that, with the right energy and kaupapa, could yield all sorts of great films.
‘‘It’s You’re-Next-meets-NicCage’s-Knowing!’’ is exactly the sort of elevator pitch I’d want any Hollywood executive to greenlight in a heartbeat.
But, sadly, Shyamalan plays Knock at the Cabin absolutely straight, drains it of any tension in the first 20 minutes and appears to be under the happy delusion that me and the three other people in the cinema wouldn’t be laughing our heads off long before the halfway mark.
Honestly, if you thought ‘‘grumpy trees’’ was a daft way for the world to end in The Happening, just wait until you hear what Shyamalan is feeding us this time.
On the plus side, Bautista is terribly miscast, but he does OK in the role. Kristen Cui is pretty amazing as 7-year-old Wen.
And Harry Potter’s Rupert Grint shows up unexpectedly with a Midwest drawl and a beard like a drowned cat.
The film looks and sounds like a multimillion dollar movie should. But even by Shyamalan’s wildly uneven standards, this one is a misfire. It’s terrible, naturally. But Knock at the Cabin is also dull. Oh, well. Next time.