Going into "Knock at the Cabin" from the trailers, viewers are not sure what more can be shown, but the film shows so much more than the trailers while somehow keeping audiences entertained.
Synopsis
While on vacation in a remote cabin in the woods, a young girl and her parents are taken hostage by four armed strangers. These strangers tell the family they must make an impossible choice to avert the apocalypse. The family must make this decision before time runs out or all will be lost.
Starring Dave Bautista as Leonard, Jonathan Groff as Eric, Ben Aldridge as Andrew, Kristen Cui as Wen, and Rupert Grint as Redmond.
What I loved
The plot. I felt this movie may have been hard to pull off, but it was the exact opposite. The characters make you feel all emotions and you don't know what to believe. It genuinely makes you sit on the edge of your seat (or curled up in a ball in my case) the entire time. This movie plays on the idea of one telling fact from fiction under dire circumstances.
The characters. Playing off my last point the characters and actors truly pull off this film. Dave Bautista is fantastic and truly puts you at ease and unease so often, with his tone and mannerisms, it just sends shivers down your spine. Not to mention Groff, Aldridge, and Cui make a perfectly beautiful family that makes you sob.
Honorable mention: the setting is magnificent throughout the film.
What I didn't love
The camera angles. More than one time throughout the film we either got these weird close-up angles of people's faces or some kind of tilted angle that makes you question the cinematography. It was very hard to take some parts seriously while I'm all up in Dave Bautista's mouth.
The reality of the events. So the structure of these four people finding each other is very unsteady throughout the whole film which makes sense with the plot, but some of the aspects just take me out of the reality aspect of the film. When the only thing we can see is the news (because it's a remote cabin with no reception) but then the live news is not even a known station it's just some made up station, it makes it hard to believe the story, and what is trying to be told. It’s just one of those aspects that pull me from the legitimacy of the film.
Verdict
I sobbed like a baby the entire film, and I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. It was so interesting to me, while some parts made me question the reality of the film, overall it was amazing.
I give 'Knock at the Cabin' an 8.5 out of 10.
