M. Night hits and misses (Cabin is a miss)

There seems to be an unspoken rule of the career of M. Night Shyamalan: If he’s directing something based on his original writing, it is likely good; if he is directing something based on someone else’s work, it’s unspeakable shit. Sixth Sense, Unbreakable/Split/Glass, Signs, The Village, Lady in the Water, and The Visit are all based on his own work, all good (sometimes niche) but good. Last Airbender, After Earth, and Old are all based on work based on other people’s writing and all utter shit not worth seeing. True, The Happening is M. Night’s own disaster, but not everyone bats a 1.000 (I did see a strong argument that it’s supposed to be bad, lambasting 50’s horror flicks…but even if that’s the case, he didn’t signal what he was doing very well). And sadly, this new film Knock at the Cabin, based on the novel The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay, is no exception in being a movie you can easily skip for all time.

So, fair warning, there are a lot of spoilers coming up.

Quick summary of the books and movie.
A gay couple takes their daughter to a cabin for a vacation. Four people attack their cabin, tie them up and then tell them they have to willingly sacrifice a member of their family to stop the apocalypse. In both film and movie, the world starts falling apart, and the four attackers are killed or committed suicide. Where the book and movie differ is that in the book, the family decides not to commit a sacrifice because any god that would require such a sacrifice is not worth worshiping, and therefore they won’t play his evil game…in the movie, one of the parents is sacrificed so their daughter can live.

This has a whole host of problems.
Let’s start with the fact that the 2019 book is so transparently a rip-off of the 2011 film Cabin in the Woods, where the kids at the end decide a sacrifice to the old gods just isn’t worth it. I guess Shyamalan realized how much this would come off as cheap plagiarism (even by Hollywood standards), so he changed the ending but actually made it worse.

Why is it worse?
Because it supposed there is a god so petty, so capricious, and violent that it would condemn all of civilization if someone didn’t kill a family member in its name. Sure, that’s pretty much the vile sack of shit that Calvinism and most Christian Nationalists believe in, but it’s pretty sick. And in this day and age, propagating this disgusting image of a deity that is only worth worship because it is more powerful and can destroy you is acceptable only to people who are comfortable with a tyrant (so Christian Nationalists…).

I don’t think Shyamalan was attempting to pander to the fascists; few ever consider the relationship between religion and politics and how a free people tend to see a deity that is worthy of worship because they are rational, virtuous, and loving (i.e., what we want in society) and not just an all-powerful infant that does things on capricious whims. Thus, while there is certainly a correlation, I don’t think he intended to pander to the crowd. And so, while it’s a shitty movie, I won’t hit him for that. Still, this is terrible in that it undoes all the positive images he has presented in the movies of his own creation (except The Happening) that reveal a world where there is order, people do have a purpose in life other than being the playthings of some vile image of god, and though it may be very delayed like Karma always is, there is eventual justice to the world to the world. But not in this movie.

However, what I will hit him for is that he once again gives in to the terrible Hollywood trope of Bury, Your Gays. That a gay couple cannot see a happy ending, and it usually results in one of the two being killed before the end of your story. This subconsciously reaffirms the idea that there is something wrong with homosexuality, and it’s just become pathetic. I’m not saying that gay characters should be untouchable, but until the percentage of happy couples versus tragic endings of any gender/orientation combination are all the same, Hollywood needs to stop the mass slaughter of gays. And this is something that Shyamalan, as someone who has been in the industry for three decades, should know about, and shame on him for giving into the dumbest of all tropes.

Certainly, the actors do some great things with what they’re given, but that doesn’t forgive the underlying worthlessness of the theme of the tale that makes the whole thing not worth anyone’s time.

Shyamalan should stop trying to make other people’s ideas into movies. It never goes well.