It’s only fitting that a filmmaker with a career with as many ups and downs as M. Night Shyamalan continues to split opinion with each and every one of his new releases, and Knock at the Cabin was unsurprisingly no different.
Having realized just in the nick of time that his forays into ridiculously expensive blockbusters via the likes of Avatar: The Last Airbender and After Earth was doomed to fail because they suck insurmountably hard and didn’t make any money, the writer and director has instead decided to reinvent himself as a purveyor of bespoke genre films that don’t break the bank, but can always be relied on to turn a profit.
Continuing on in that vein, Knock at the Cabin recouped its modest $20 million budget almost three times over at the box office, although it proved to be every bit as polarizing as you’d imagine Shyamalan dealing with the end of the world through a contained and intimate drama focusing on a single family and their unwelcome guests would be.
Some loved it, others hated it with an unbridled passion, and then there were the ones who could take it or leave it. Based on the fact FlixPatrol has named the loose literary adaptation as the number one top-viewed movie among subscribers in the United States, though, we’ve got a pretty good idea of which demographic has been flocking to Knock at the Cabin in their numbers.
Anyone expecting full-blown annihilation should look elsewhere, but Shyamalan’s much smaller look at the end of the world is interesting enough to take a chance on if you’re on the fence.