A Surprising Consensus Is Emerging Around The First Trailer For Knock At The Cabin
You can never quite tell what you're going to get from an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Will it be the understated and graceful menace of "The Sixth Sense" or the absurd, feverish melodrama of "The Happening," for example? All of his films have their fans and detractors, and his often-idiosyncratic projects (such as the recent "Split" or "Old") tend to be polarizing, to say the least.
But if the recently released trailer for the filmmaker's upcoming thriller "Knock at the Cabin" is any indication, he might be inches away from hitting an unambiguous home run.
While trailers for previous Shyamalan films have been met with vastly differing responses from both fans and skeptics, the trailer for "Knock at the Cabin" appears to be building a surprising consensus, and that's reason enough for everyone to get excited about the upcoming film, which stars Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, and Kristen Cui as a family on vacation in a secluded cabin — only to be terrorized by a group of apocalyptic zealots led by Dave Bautista ("Guardians of the Galaxy").
Knock at the Cabin will play to M. Night Shyamalan's strengths
You can check out the unnerving, suspenseful trailer for "Knock at the Cabin" above. And a quick glance at the comments underneath the trailer on YouTube will show that the response to it seems to be almost universally positive, this time around, leading some to believe this might by the unqualified hit that Shyamalan fans have been wanting for a long time. "While M Night Shyamalan is hit or miss, when he does low budget thrillers he's at his best," opines commenter Zilla Universe.
Indeed, it's hard to find any fans that would disagree. Over on Twitter, @babes_binsol writes, "I've been a fan of his from the beginning. All his movies are well written, great plot twists, keeps me guessing, etc. Keep your movies coming!" Dave Bautista, who is playing a mentally unstable antagonist who threatens the main characters' lives in order to stave off the end of the world (or so he believes), is the subject of particular praise for what we see of his performance in the trailer. David Emanual Rosini chimed in with an especially lofty hosanna for the wrestler-turned-actor: "I'm glad people get to see how great of an actor Batista really is. Best actor to come out of wrestling for sure." Many viewers are also excited to see Rupert Grint, a long way from Hogwarts, in the film as well, such as @lou_kicks, particularly given that Grint has been absent from the film landscape for so long.
Of course, it won't be known for sure whether "Knock at the Cabin" lives up to fan optimism until it hits theaters, which is set to happen on February 3, 2023.