My last year in college, I was on a run with Cam, and he told me about a book that he read, and he read it because he saw an article about it on NPR. The book was called Cabin at the End of the World, which is a pretty epic name. I trust Cam’s recommendations, so I read it shortly after he told me about it. Fast forward a few years, and Cam was coming to upstate New York, because Berry was running in a cross country race close by, and the morning of the race, I met up with Cam to go for a run, and the day before, I found out that M. Night Shyamalan was making the book into a movie, but he was slightly changing the title, so now the movie was going to be called Knock at the Cabin, still a good name, but not quite as good, but it is shorter, so probably better to put on the posters.
Knock at the Cabin is the story of a family, Andrew, Eric, and Wen, who are taking a lake vacation. Their cabin is very secluded in the woods in Pennsylvania. Wen is outside collecting grasshoppers by herself, when a mountain of a man shows up, Leonard, and he makes friends with her, until Leonard’s friends show up carrying intimidating weapons. In total, there are four of them. Wen flees to the house, and gets her dads’ attention, and they lock themselves in their house. Leonard tries to be friendly and explain that he needs to come in and talk to them, and that the fate of the world is riding on this discussion, but the dads are not buying it, and they are very intimidated. Since the fate of the world is riding on this, Leonard and his crew break into the house, and in the process, Eric gets a concussion, not something you want to happen when potentially making a world saving decision.
Leonard, Sabrina, Redmond, and Adriana introduce themselves to the family, once they have tied up the family and cleaned up the house that they had destroyed when breaking in. They say that they were brought to this cabin through shared visions, and that their visions also predicted a coming apocalypse that was going to start in the next day, but that it could be stopped. To stop the apocalypse, the family would have to decide to choose one of their family members to sacrifice in order to ensure that the world would continue. The family did not believe them, and they tried to come up with ways to say the group was just breaking in to terrorize them, but after they made their first decision to not sacrifice one of their members, the group sacrificed Redmond, and they said that each time they decided not to sacrifice a member of their family, a member of the group would be killed, thus showing their commitment to the idea that the world was going to end.
One aspect of this movie that stuck out to me in comparison to the book was its commitment to not show the graphic violence. The book was very intense in its depictions of heads being smashed in with these brutal weapons, but in the movie, where there was violence, it was typically depicted off the screen. There would be blood and the remnants of the violence, but the actual violence was typically not shown. This had to have been a conscious choice by Shyamalan. He wanted the audience to be more keyed in on the importance of the choices being made, and the tension being created rather than solely focusing on the violence. There is a lot of morality and spirituality being thrown into this film, the violence would have taken that away.
In my One Sentence Review on Instagram, I said that the movie did a good job of depicting the book, and I felt like this was true at the time, but I did not remember the book as well as I thought I did. There was some stuff, that I was like okay this was not in the book, but I did not remember the ending much at all, and there was a massive difference between the end of the book and the end of the movie. It reminded me of the book Cujo and the movie adaptation.
When I came up to Syracuse to visit for the first time, Sue took my dad and I to Ithaca, and we went to a used bookstore, and in the store, I found a well-worn copy of Cujo. I am a Stephen King lover, and I had seen the movie, but I had never read the book. So I bought it for a few bucks and ripped through it. When I got to the end of the book, I was surprised, because the kid trapped in the car dies. This did not happen in the movie, and that is a pretty shocking twist of things. So when I went back and read the plot summary of Cabin at the End of the World, I was surprised again to find out that I had totally forgotten that in the book, Wen was accidently killed, and that was counted as the sacrifice. In the movie, Eric ends up being the sacrifice, because he feels an obligation to save the world, maybe it was because of the concussion, but maybe he had a spiritual awakening. The other big change was the presence of the TV, they kept flipping it on to see the predictions come true, but in the book, I do not remember the TV being there.
A big aspect of this film comes from faith, and what people will do for their beliefs. There is the group, who believe the world is going to end, and they are willing to come to this cabin, and scare the living hell out of a family, and not only that, but they are also trying to convince them that they need to sacrifice one of the members of their family. That takes a lot of conviction to do. Not to mention that they allow themselves to be killed to show how serious they are. It also shows the faith in the family, because at the end, Eric is willing to give his life, because he believes that these premonitions are true, and that the tragedies occurring are not coincidences.
One thing I thought about when seeing the movie was what I would I do if I was in this situation. I feel like I could probably be pretty easily convinced that the world was ending, but I would find it hard to believe that it would come down a decision I make if the world would end or not. I do not have that much delusion of self-importance. Also there is no chance that I would be able to sacrifice any one in my family either. I do wonder if dogs would count, not that I would sacrifice the family dog, but technically Wen is a part of the family, but she is not blood related, and dogs are considered a part of the family, so would that count? Did they specifically pick a family without a dog or pet? Also if they immediately chose to kill one of the family members, someone would be going to jail for a long time. This trailer also brought up a conversation with my dad about the fleeting feeling of safety in a cabin, especially once night comes, and even more so in cabins when you are way out there. It is the perfect setting for any type of scary movie, but it really shows how creepy it can be when you are uncomfortable in broad day light.
In the book, it made it seem more unclear as to if the world was actually going to end, whereas in the movie, it seemed likely that the capturers were on to something. With that being said, the movie still did a great job of creating tension, and they did it all in broad day light, and they also created doubt, that this could possibly be just the most messed up hate crime set up ever. The one hundred minutes of this movie flew by, and as far as scary movies go, this was mild. Shyamalan showed that he is back, and that he still has his fastball. Also when the knocked at the cabin, like the title says, they were solid knocks, like the perfect sound. It is truly a thought-provoking movie, and it accomplishes its goals. I give this film 3.5 stars, and I recommend going to see it! It makes for a fun trip to the movies.
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