Director M. Night Shyamalan will return to the big screen next year with his apocalyptic psychological horror film, Knock at the Cabin. The feature is based on Paul G. Tremblay’s 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World. The filmmaker has a reputation for making original films with contemporary supernatural plots and twisted endings and the upcoming movie is the second in his career to get an R rating. In a new interview with Total Film, Shyamalan gave an exclusive new look at the movie as well as discussed handling climactic twists and turns of the movie.

Knock at the Cabin sees a family of three, a young girl and her two dads, vacationing at a remote cabin in the woods. However, they are taken hostage by four armed strangers who demand they make an unthinkable choice to avert the apocalypse. The previously released trailer showcases the thrilling scenario, and now fans are eagerly waiting to discover the choice that the family has to make. The director revealed that he had a lot of discussions with the studio “about whether to say, at the end of the trailer, what is the thing that they have to do.” Though they came to the decision of “saying no, we just have to get everyone to understand that the thing is not going to be good!"

The newly released image sees Abby Quinn, Dave Bautista, and Rupert Grint possibly negotiating with the family, as they are seen inside the cabin. Speaking of his new work Shyamalan divulges that he’s drawn to things that “take genres and bend them in new ways, or change genres from what you thought you were watching." Hinting to the audience that there’s more to the family’s choice than meets the eye. He explained, "The architectural twist is part of the fun of it. And as I’m morphing genres, I have to move up into more high-octane genres. If you cadence down, even if you do it really well, it has a certain reducing-of-stakes quality that the audience feels."

knock at the cabin
Image via Total Film

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The feature sees Bautista as Leonard, Nikki Amuka-Bird as Adriane, Quinn as Sabrina, and Grint as Redmond, the intruders, while Jonathan Groff stars as Andrew, Ben Aldridge as Eric, and young actor Kristen Cui as Wen, the family in distress.

Knock at the Cabin is set to be released on February 3, 2023.