Thoughts on Knock at the Cabin

this is unusually spoiler heavy for me and gives away several large plot points, go in forewarned

There’s this nearly imperceptible moment where it’s implied that one of the characters, Andrew, is responsible for his own homophobic attack. That if he hadn’t ‘antagonised’ the bigot, he wouldn’t have been targeted.

That is obviously bullshit, but importantly it exposes the concept of catholic original sin in the centre of this story. Eric, who has to die, is innocent, he doesn’t antagonise anyone, he is the one chosen to suffer for the perceived sins of his partner.

This is the dogma of the religious and the tolerant. Their issue is with the loud gays, not the nice ones, but they punish them all and that isn’t their fault. I think Shyamalan has taken this at face value in his rewriting and reinterpretation of the original novel. He sees bigotry as at least in part, the fault of those targeted by it.

I wanted more from the film, I wanted to see the bones underneath and the interesting ideas it had. But I got stuck on this bigotry early, it disappointed me more than upset me. This tired old idea stuck in the middle of the film. It sucks.