M. Night Shyamalan On What Makes His ‘Knock At The Cabin’ A Perfect Nightmare

M. Night Shyamalan’s movies have grossed over $3.4 billion at the worldwide box office so far. His latest, Knock at the Cabin, which has already had rave reactions from preview audiences and critics, looks set to increase that figure.

The apocalyptic, psychological horror is about a family vacationing in a cabin in the middle of nowhere who are taken hostage by four armed strangers who demand they must sacrifice one of their own to prevent the end of the world.

Knock at the Cabin boasts an ensemble cast led by Dave Bautista, including Jonathan Groff and previous M. Night collaborators Rupert Grint and Nikki Amuka-Bird.

I caught up with Shyamalan, who wrote, produced, and directed the film, to discuss why he prefers to screen his movies early and believes only one actor could play a key role.

Simon Thompson: Have you seen the early reactions to Knock at the Cabin? It’s not often that we’re allowed to share our thoughts on your movies so far ahead of release. Does it demonstrate a real confidence in this one?

M. Night Shyamalan: I’ve never changed that pattern from when I’ve financed my movies; my feeling has always been, ‘Screen it and screen it for audiences early.’ That’s been my philosophy, but sometimes we haven’t done that for reasons that, in retrospect, I regret. It should always be screened early. It’s for the fans, everybody should be seeing it, and I don’t care where or how, or what; just screen it. That’s my feeling because when I’m done, I usually have a feeling that I can’t wait to talk to them rather than having someone in the middle that’s telling them something. Take it out, it’s just them and me, and then the fans tell you guys. I did that with The Visit, and we went and screened it; I think it was at Comic-Con in July, and then we released it in September. With Split, we did it again that way. We showed it in September at Fantastic Fest, the AFI Fest in November, and then we did the Alamo screenings months ahead of the January release. With Knock at the Cabin, I was like, ‘As soon as I finish it, start screening it.’ We finished it, and we started screening it for everyone, and what a wonderful reception we had. I’m so happy. It isn’t normal, but it’s what I always want to have happen. The fans are so excited to see it, and I want them to have it.

Thompson: A number of your movies I have physically felt while watching them because they have been that engaging. With Knock at the Cabin, I felt my stomach sinking multiple times. Do you know which of your films will have that kind of effect on the audience?

Shyamalan: Each one has an intended cadence to it. I make them with the audience to some extent. I’m showing and watching it together with them. That’s why I have this theory about showing the movie to the audience before the system tells you something. Take that out, and it’s you and me. I have this very specific way of thinking about telling the story, and then the audience sees it, but it’s not exactly the movie I intended. For example, there are so many unintended emotions coming across that are invisible to me. I’ll give you an example totally unrelated to Knock at the Cabin. So, if the end of the scene is a guy and you end on his close-up, then you cut to the next scene, and a naked woman is getting ready in her closet. The audience goes, ‘I always knew he lusted after her,’ and I’m like, ‘Why did you think that?’ They’re like, ‘I never trusted him because he’s always lusting after the neighbor,’ and I’m like, ‘When did I do that?’ Those two scenes are juxtaposed. If I go from the guys close up to a hand picking up shoes, a hand picking up a belt, and then the clock, and then cut to her naked, the audience goes, ‘Oh, wait a minute. We’re in another story.’ That’s an unintended, beautiful ramification of the art form of juxtaposition. Unwinding and being able to be like a doctor and go, ‘Where’s the pain? Hey, the pain is in your knee, but it’s not really in your knee; it’s over here.’ That’s so beautiful. The art form is so mysterious in that way. That’s the part of the process where I’m trying to get the movie the audience is watching and the story I’m trying to tell with the film to be the same. Sometimes I run out of time, and I can’t figure that out, but when I can get it to be the same, I have this feeling of peace.

Thompson: Let’s talk about time because you’ve been quoted as saying Knock at the Cabin is the fastest script you’ve ever written. How fast was it, and how does that compare to your other movies? Was it drastically quicker?

Shyamalan: It was probably five months from when I started it. That’s a month shorter than Signs, which was the quickest until now. That was six months. All the rest are somewhere between six months and a year. It’s a process of figuring out who the characters are, where the plot is, and all that stuff. The interesting thing about Knock at the Cabin is that, at times, it was both the easiest and the hardest movie to write. It was very strange, and I’d have to really analyze why that was the case. The storyboarding process was the hardest to do by far. And there was just a grind every day of pushing through. That was about four months, so almost the same amount of time in the storyboarding process as there was in the script. I was doing nothing but storyboarding all day long, grinding away, looking at drawings and going to language, and asking questions like, ‘What is this scene? What does this character feel, and should it be them feeling it? How does it change from scene 37 to scene 87? When you see movies that are really thought out, like Parasite, which is a masterpiece, it’s super inspiring that a filmmaker took the time. For me, we build the sets to my shots. I see the bathroom over there, the front door over here, and we literally build it to that. I think Parasite was the same way. Here’s the kitchen table, here’s the door to the basement, and so on, and as an audience member, I think they feel all those choices. It takes time.

Thompson: On choices, sometimes you choose to use actors in multiple projects. You’ve done it with Bruce Willis, and here we see you work again with Rupert Grint and Nikki Amuka-Bird. How do you know who you will take with you from project to project, and do you see them as muses?

Shyamalan: It is on a project-by-project basis. Right now, sitting with you, the health of the human beings that I’m working with is the primary thing. I would say that emotional health and mental health are at an all-time low for everyone. As someone that leads a few 100 people on this and then another few 100 people in a TV show. I can feel it. We’re all not okay right now, so having around me these beautiful souls that have found peace in some way and they’re grateful is critical. We’re doing such hard things, and I’m pushing and pushing and pushing; I need vulnerability, and I don’t want to be dealing with damage in the wrong way. Rupert is such a beautiful soul, and so is Dave Bautista. I’m not even sure Jonathan Groff is a human being; he’s so sweet, like an Angel, but the same goes for all of them. I got to make a movie with seven people I was lucky to be in a room with as purely human beings. That brought out of me a better version of myself and an aspirational version of myself, in my energy and between all of us. Hopefully, that translates into the movie with the audience feeling the energies all being in the right place.

Thompson: Your casting is always interesting, but Knock at the Cabin is one of your projects where the right casting is critical.

Shyamalan: Yes, it was. You are absolutely right. When I think about how friendly the film gods were to me on this one, I basically had two parts that only two people could have played, one being Dave and the other being Kristen Cui, who played Win. There weren’t any second choices, and in that scenario, they just happened to come to me at this moment in their lives and my life. That has happened previously with Bryce Dallas Howard, Haley Joel Osment, and James McAvoy. How lucky am I that I think of a character and a human being at that exact moment in their life where they step forward? It’s the magic of cinema. I really don’t have any other explanation for it.

Knock at the Cabin lands in theaters on Friday, February 3, 2023