Knock at the Cabin: M. Night Shyamalan wraps production on his new thriller

Filming on writer/director M. Night Shyamalan’s new thriller Knock at the Cabin started back in April, and after the first week of filming was complete Shyamalan took to social media to tell his fans and followers that this is going to be a “very dark, emotional film. One take shook me up so much I had to walk away to collect myself.” Since then, he has also posted updates to confirm that Knock at the Cabin was being shot on film, “using lenses from the nineties to get the old school thriller look.” And his most recent update, posted over the weekend, let us know that production has wrapped on Knock at the Cabin.

Universal has scheduled a February 3, 2023 theatrical release for the film.

Knock at the Cabin stars Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy), Rupert Grint (Servant), Nikki Amuka-Bird (Old), Ben Aldridge (Pennyworth), and Jonathan Groff (The Matrix Resurrections). Character and plot details are being kept under wraps, but our friends over at Bloody Disgusting have heard that Knock at the Cabin is “a home invasion horror film that takes place during the apocalypse.” Their source even compared the story to the Paul Tremblay novel The Cabin at the End of the World. Could this be an adaptation of the Tremblay novel, like Old was an adaptation of the graphic novel Sandcastle?

Copies of Tremblay’s novel can be purchased at THIS LINK. Here’s the description:

Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake. Their closest neighbors are more than two miles in either direction along a rutted dirt road.

One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen but he is young, friendly, and he wins her over almost instantly. Leonard and Wen talk and play until Leonard abruptly apologizes and tells Wen, “None of what’s going to happen is your fault”. Three more strangers then arrive at the cabin carrying unidentifiable, menacing objects. As Wen sprints inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls out: “Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world.”

Thus begins an unbearably tense, gripping tale of paranoia, sacrifice, apocalypse, and survival that escalates to a shattering conclusion, one in which the fate of a loving family and quite possibly all of humanity are entwined. The Cabin at the End of the World is a masterpiece of terror and suspense from the fantastically fertile imagination of Paul Tremblay.

That description does mention a character who is “the largest man Wen has ever seen”, and Shyamalan said he needed a “giant human being” to play the character he cast Bautista as. 

Whatever Knock at the Cabin really is, I find it promising that it’s meant to look like an old school thriller and has moments that are so intense that even Shyamalan has been shaken up by them.

Are you looking forward to Knock at the Cabin? Let us know by leaving a comment below.