WIf you had to sacrifice a certain number of people to save a larger number, what would you choose? The American horror director M. Night Shyamalan took this ethical mind game, known as the “trolley problem”, as a template for his new film “Knock at the Cabin”. Of course, he adapts the premises of cinematic narration; the protagonists of the film are not standing at the points to divert a railway wagon (trolley) and save more or fewer people according to their decision. Instead, you find yourself in an idyllic log cabin in the woods.
Little daughter Wen is outside catching grasshoppers in the midday heat when a stranger (Dave Bautista) shows up and slowly begins to question her about her parents. Right from the start, Shyamalan ramps up the tension, letting the camera capture both of their faces in an extreme close-up. The child appraises the stranger suspiciously. The stranger pretends to come as a friend, his gaze claims honest openness, but holds back something that the girl must not suspect. First violins pluck an ominous premonition into the chirping of cicadas.
The apocalypse is imminent
When three more strangers approach the cabin through the sparse forest, all armed with large axes, clubs or pitchforks, Wen runs into the house to warn their two fathers, Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and Eric (Jonathan Groff). Of course it’s no use. The four characters soon gain access to the hut and tell the little family a crazy story: the apocalypse is imminent and can only be averted if the little family in this hut chooses one of their members to sacrifice in order to save humanity . The four are only present because they all received the same visions at the same time that led them to this hut, they assure us that no evil is really meant, except to bring about the decision just mentioned.
The tied up couple tries to discuss with the intruders, to unmask their visions as a mental disorder, their mission as a cult idea. However, when the leader of the four turns on the television and shows pictures of a huge tsunami that threatens to bury the American west coast, at least the devout Christian Eric begins to have doubts.
Shyamalan garnishes this ethics-horror chamber game with references of Alfred Hitchcock quality: he has Dave Bautista fight in the bathroom in which a shower curtain plays a central role, and he’s not above making a longer cameo, like her in shorter ones British directors also used to incorporate this form into their films. Where a European director might have peppered the narrative arc about the end of the world with general art-historical allusions or, more concretely, references to the rich fund of Bible painting, Shyamalan shows himself to be an American through and through: no frills, no meta-level, no symbolic images, he is satisfied the basic idea.
By the middle of the film, however, it has exhausted itself a little, only at the end does it unfold a few more dense shock episodes. The fact that you can watch the film with interest until then is due to the actors, above all Dave Bautista. So far, the former wrestler has mostly only been able to shine in action roles in a decade of his film career, although as the superhero Drax, incapable of irony, in the Marvel comic adaptation “Guardians of the Galaxy”, he was able to show that he can do more than gracefully pull things and people out of the To clear away, he now adds a dimension in “Knock at the Cabin”.
He manages to keep the openness with which he met the girl Wen at the beginning as a gentle character trait when he later does terrible things. The daring specification of the production, that the intruders should be comprehensible in their actions for the audience, rests solely on his shoulders. It was not for nothing that Shyamalan kept letting the camera capture that face as close as possible. The actor casts the character as a man in a very deep quandary, heart broken by what he must do here.
Since mainstream horror films tend to use genre tools to explore current issues, the most interesting part of this film is hidden in brief flashbacks showing how Eric and Andrew’s relationship developed, how they adopted the girl Wen, how they become had to assert against resentments and family objections. Once they break through the fourth wall. The scene takes place in a bar, the two men tell each other short confessions of love. Then a drunk attacked her and beats Andrew to the hospital. The surrounding guests watched the homophobic attack without doing anything, nobody intervened.
Shyamalan thus, not very subtly, poses the question: Do you even want to save such a society? Are these people worth sacrificing? Is belief in the good in people greater and more justified than one’s own egoism? Incidentally, the film gives a very clear answer, which does it credit.