Night Shyamalan was once one of Hollywood’s hottest filmmakers. His name was a bigger draw than any actor who may be starring in one of his projects. One article even dubbed him, “The Next Steven Spielberg?” Perhaps that was the beginning of his downfall because as big M. Night was, he was just as suddenly not. A string of both commercially and critic flops will do that. However, he then went back to his roots when he made “Split” (a movie that should have at least earned James McAvoy a Best Actor nomination), which turned out to be a surprised sequel to one of his earlier successes, “Unbreakable”. He has been on a steady ascension since and continues in that direction with his latest, “Knock at the Cabin”.
This is one of those thrillers that gets going from the very first frame and does not let up until the very last. At a remote cabin, a little girl and her two dads are taken hostage by four strangers with diabolical looking weapons. The strangers inform the trio that either Daddy Eric (Jonathan Groff), Daddy Andrew (Ben Aldridge) or Wen (Kristen Cui) must be sacrificed to avoid the apocalypse from occurring. Further, one of the three must be the one to kill the other, the strangers themselves will not harm them, but will make them witness what happens to the world if they don’t comply.
