Knock at the Cabin is one of M. Night Shyamalans better pictures, often encroaching on the top tier of his career. Doesn’t quite get there, but it’s sometimes a squeaker. If the script had been a little tighter, a little smarter, we’d have had a winner (and we’d be one step closer to calling the bad ol’ days of After Earth and The Last Airbender an anomaly).

The film is about a family at a cabin (in the woods) who are set upon by a seemingly random assortment of average citizens. The family is given an impossible choice and if they don’t choose, many, many people will die.

The script is interesting. For a lot of this film, I was impressed that M. Night was avoiding some of his worse habits. Like injecting awkward and baffling comedy like some of the passing humor in Old. It often feels like his second chance at a less hotdog-centric version of The Happening… only without anyone talking to plastic house plants.

Unfortunately, it’s not as focused or as strong as it could have been. It feels like it wants to be a smarter, more unsettling, and more cryptic film that asks questions about faith, devotion, and belief. But it never really reaches the peak. It comes close but feels like the thoughtfulness and depth were just out of its reach.

Part of the problem is that it feels like “but what if Q-Anon is right?” That maybe the script is saying the nutbars that have crawled out of the woodwork over the past decade might be onto something. And I wonder if this is what Shyamalan believes in or is he just playing in an interesting toybox with creepy real-world implications.

The production value and camera work are great though. There’s a chunkiness, a meatiness to how good the film looks and feels. Better than pretty much all of Shyamalan’s past work. It’s got an assured directorial feeling.

I very much enjoyed this film and, at times, it surpassed Unbreakable on my list o’ Shyamalan films (which is in third place in my rankings). But its lack of intellectual, moral, or deeper focus kept it from those heights. Still, a VERY solid production from a director who often struggles to get back to his roots as a great director.

Score: 88