In short: Knock at the Cabin (2023)

My relationship with the films of M. Nigh Shyamalan has been long, rough, and one-sided, resulting in quite a few annoyed write-ups by me. With most directors, I’d simply have given up on their films or shelved them for a later decade (once our AI overlords abolish work for anyone but robots), and spared my imaginary readers some suffering. Thing is, on a technical level, Shyamalan has a second great film in him, he’s just not interested in making it, apparently.

Instead, we get this incredibly offensive hymn to literal sacrifice, a film that masturbates on the altar Abraham has dragged Isaac onto, and doesn’t even leave in the biblical get out of jail free card, I was only kidding, buddy. For Shyamalan, apparently worse than the godhood of the Old Testament, insists on his sacrifice. Which results in a film that exults in fulfilling the random whims of an ill-defined godhood for no reason whatsoever, instead of saying no to what the film can’t even bring itself to call a monstrosity. Ideologically and morally, this is complete opposite of the Paul Tremblay novel it supposedly adapts, by the way, and while I’m not actually much of an admirer of the writer’s body of work, that has rather more to do with his concept and execution of ambiguity rather than his books getting hot and bothered at bending the knee to abuse and monstrosity (because they do the opposite).

Apart from its moral bankruptcy (and when do you find me complaining about a film’s morality?), and some bizarre ideas (the “four human qualities” are apparently malice, nurture, healing and guidance, whatever that’s supposed to mean), the film suffers from another problem as well: namely, while I approve of Shyamalan’s decision to for once eschew his beloved, idiot, plot twist in the end, thus we get a film where everything that happens in it is laid out right at its beginning, and is indeed happening as advertised, which really isn’t how a narrative is supposed to work, last I checked. Given this, the film feels drawn out and draggy, shambling to its enraging foregone conclusion with little dramatic tension, however dramatic the score by Herdís Stefánsdóttir swells.

That this thing wastes a great performance by Dave Bautista only adds further insult to injury.