If Shyamalan's post-resurgence works have one thing in common, it's that they're all only moderately good movies that don't utilise interesting premises tov their fullest extent.

Knock At The Cabin is a pretty good watch in spite of Shyamalam's instincts. He takes the book's relatively thoughtful subtext and over-explains it, as well as changing the ending. The book's ending, while bittersweet, actually has a LOT more to say about love and family than the movie's overly sentimental but ultimately empty ending.

I would still recommend.

SPOILERS

I enjoyed this quite a bit. All the usual Shyamalan problems, like you say Ben, but just a really entertaining story.

I haven't read the book, but reading about the differences now, I feel like Shyamalan diverged pretty strongly and set out for an allegory about selfishness in the era of COVID, late capitalism, inequality, and so on. The line about "the choice families have been making all along" or whatever felt like the whole point of the movie to me. I thought the movie became pretty straightforwardly an assault on the "family before everything" themes that are a cornerstone of many Hollywood movies and franchises -- which I thought was pretty neat and bold.

That said, those choices didn't necessarily gel with the book super well, and I can see why people like Richard Brody felt like it had morphed into a weird reactionary allegory.

Ultimately I thought it was a very satisfying thriller/melodrama, and I liked the laidback feeling of inexorability in contrast to the typical home invasion genre entry that always feels like 95% screaming and crying and always annoys the hell out of me.

Edited to add: I like the title of the book WAY more than the title of the movie.

Mama always said that an M Night Movie was like a box of chocolates you Never Know what your going to get.

Let me preface these comments by saying that I am not a major Night fan, his films have always been hit/miss for me, and I skipped out of some of his previous films, especially, after viewing “The Last Airbender,”  I wrote a letter to myself in the past warning me not to watch it. I then threw it into the ocean and hoped that it would somehow get lost in the depths of forever and travel through time back to my previous self.  I'm still waiting on this plan to work but unfortunately I can still remember the film. This may seem like an unlikely thing to hope for, but after you've seen that catastrophe, hope is all you'll have left.  All things considered, it's incredible M Night's career survived "Last Airbender."  It really felt like he didn't care about making a movie that did justice to the source material.  And Will Smith saying that getting his son involved in "After Earth" was the biggest mistake of his career (well the biggest mistake prior to last year's Oscars) only damaged M Night's reputation even more.

But this movie seemed like a simple yet effective thriller, it was getting decent reviews....

Anywaz, Guys, brothers, sisters, etc... "Knock At The Cabin" just lends further credence to my theory that nothing good ever comes out having a a cabin especially in the woods.

In a nutshell, 4 intruders break into a gay couple's home & tell them that a sacrifice has to be made where one of them has to kill the other one or their daughter, otherwise the world is going to end. Throughout the film, the audience is questioning whether these four intruders are lunatics, are they the real deal or they are motivated by a hidden agenda.

Without spoiling, I can only go so far, but by golly,  it was pretty predictable and it was easy to guess who was going to die pretty early on.  But it is far from being as bad as M Night's worst films.  Dave Bautista was the main highlight and made the movie much better than it should have been.  That said, I wish I could say I loved it. I didn't. The finale was unsatisfying to me. I left the cinema wanting more. I was, however, entertained throughout its entire runtime. I did feel like a very well made, prolonged episode of a TV series, but undeveloped enough for a fully-fledged feature film. I adored the Sixth Sense, and I've watched "Devil" (the group trapped in the elevator) twice. I just feel like Shyamalan has great ideas but his execution is hit or miss. Maybe if he stuck more closely to the book, the movie would have been better. JMHO.

Still, this is very much worth a watch.-_ghostie gal