New messiah of the cinema for some, bluff for others, the career of M. Night Shyamalan It does not leave you indifferent and, of course, it has had more unexpected twists than its own plots.
Like many artists to whom success comes massively and suddenly, the triumph of The sixth Sense it was both a blessing and a curse for the Philadelphia filmmaker. This film created a model for cinema, largely imitated by other directors and to which he himself Shyamalan has had to deal with. His is a cinema that combines the intimate with ambitious concepts, the everyday with the fantastic, the familiar with the individual, the commercial with the authorial. In the search for that balance, the results have been uneven, with a filmography that has oscillated from success to failure, but always dominated by the shadow of his first big blockbuster.
BUILDING YOUR OWN PATH
The first 15 years of the 21st century saw the rise and fall of a filmmaker. Promoted as the new revolutionizer of the cinema, little by little, M. Night Shyamalan he was discovering that it is difficult to live up to the high expectations of the public and that the game of Hollywood can be toxic.
In recent times, and after the failures of Airbender, the Last Warrior y After Earthhis two most openly commercial a priori bets, Shyamalan He has preferred to return to a field with greater independence quotas, although this means less budget and having to guarantee it out of his own pocket. knock at the door falls within this new stage and, of course, it is a film that cannot (and does not intend to) hide the hallmarks of its director.
OTHERS CABIN
It is striking that the film is so openly identifiable with the filmmaker’s recurring themes, when it is one of the few works in his filmography that is not based on an original script. He had previously happened with Airbender, the Last Warrior, After Earth (precisely his two less notable works) and with his previous title, Time.
The film is an adaptation of The Cabin at the End of the Worldthird novel of Paul Tremblaya writer who entered the radar of many readers after he Stephen King praise his novel A Head Full of Ghosts.
AUTHOR’S SEAL
In the film we find multiple elements that seem to wink at Shyamalan’s previous films, except for the fact that they are present in the original novel. The fact that the plot takes place in a single space, with a threat that comes from outside, the link character of the protagonists, or the very construction of suspense and dramatic tension remind us of signs.
The location in the middle of nature and the apocalyptic component takes us back to The incident. Having a child protagonist who reacts with unusual maturity to terrifying and supernatural situations leads us to The sixth Sense. Finally, the allegorical character played by each of the characters could also be found in The Girl of the Water. It is clear why Shyamalan wanted to adapt this story and it is evident that in the adaptation process he has emphasized those aspects that were closest to him in order to strengthen his own identity in the film.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF FEAR
Forget the unexpected twists made in Shyamalan. Personally, the plot of the film seems well built, but totally predictable. At the script level, the tape is not without elements of interest and there are different layers of interesting reading, but nothing is going to happen that the viewer cannot foresee well in advance, among other things, because on this occasion, fortunately.
Shyamalan saves us the explanations that undermine the mystery (and that supposed the worst of his previous film, Time). The great interest of the film lies in one of the most attractive aspects of the cinema of Shyamalanits staging and its ability to build suspense and tension in the viewer.
knock at the door returns us to an inventive audiovisual narrator who uses the grammar of cinema with great beauty and skill. It is not only that he knows how to narrate skillfully, but also that he knows how to give that narrative a greater dimension with his own speech, where the break in everyday life, family affective ties or past traumas enrich the value of the staging.
THE RIDERS
As with the plot, the cinema of Shyamalan bet on characters that work on various levels. The protagonists of knock at the door They come to join that catalog of characters that Shyamalan works from the emotional value, building characters with whom the viewer can empathize and who are close to them. Here, once again, the great success is starting from a daily reality, with its lights and shadows, led by the couple played by Jonathan Groff y Ben Aldridgetogether with his daughter Wen (an amazing Chui Christian).
Their lives have nothing extraordinary, with flashbacks that underline that everyday life, and that, as in The sixth Sense, The Protected o signs, will play a determining, almost prophetic role in the decisions that the protagonists are going to make. The assailants, on this occasion, also belong to the same sphere. Despite the forceful physique of Dave Batista, his is a character who strives to make it clear that he is not a violent being, but, like his companions, he is also the victim of an external, supernatural component, which is the one that undermines the normality of their existence.
Shyamalan demonstrates once again his skill as a director of actors with some excellent Jonathan Groff y Dave Batistawho here offers her best performance to date (it’s also true that this wasn’t hard to beat either).
APOCALYPSE
knock at the door is a good example of the current stage in which the career of Shyamalan, where he has lowered his level of ambition, but he seems more comfortable and with greater control of the story he wants to tell. His most ambitious and accomplished works remain far away, but it is a film with compact and solvent packaging, consistent with the film identity of its author’s cinema. Perhaps the problem was that we insisted that Shyamalan whatever we wanted it to be, and he, for better or for worse, has preferred to make the type of films that interested him.
