Paul Tremblay’s novel The Cabin at the End of the World feels like the perfect source material for an M. Night Shyamalan film. The story of an isolated cabin housing an apocalyptic choice seems well-suited for a director who has built his name with intimate stories that shake the foundations of everything we know.
Tremblay’s novel follows Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and Eric (Jonathan Groff), a couple vacationing with their daughter Wen (Kristen Cui) at a Pennsylvania lake house when a knock at their door pits their family’s survival against the continuation of humanity. Four strangers, Leonard (Dave Bautista), Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Adriane (Abby Quinn), and Redmond (Rupert Grint) have come to present them with a choice: choose and kill a member of their family or unleash the apocalypse.
A significant amount of marketing for Shyamalan’s adaptation of the book, titled Knock at the Cabin, has been built around this decision with audiences commanded to “make the choice” in the movie’s tagline. Tremblay’s novel ends on an ambiguous note and an afterword describes the story as an “empathy test” for the reader. He references William Golding’s Lord of the Flies in which a dominant majority sacrifices a group of othered survivors to maintain control of the community and appease a monstrous deity who turns out to be a mirage. Shyamalan puts his thumbs on the scales and dramatically changes Tremblay’s conclusion, shifting the story’s empathetic core and telling the audience in no uncertain terms who should be sacrificed and who should be saved.
Faithful to the Source
The first two acts of Shyamalan’s adaptation are remarkably faithful to Tremblay’s novel. Shyamalan captures the rustic isolation of the cabin as well as the slowly building tension and shocking acts of violence described in the text. Each performance closely mirrors their literary counterpart with Bautista in particular bringing the gentle giant Leonard to life. Grint may falter a bit with a Massachusetts accent, but his Redmond evokes the same seething hostility as Tremblay’s version of the character.
The novel fleshes out the story’s details with a shifting point of view that amplifies the horrific choice Eric and Andrew face. We not only learn about the vicious hate crime Andrew survived (before he met Eric in the novel), but we experience the couple’s first chance encounter with each other as well as their trip to China to adopt Wen. More troubling memories include Wen’s obsession with looking at pictures of herself as an infant, Andrew’s decision to buy a gun, and their ominous conversation when educating Wen about the dangerous weapon hidden in their house. Shyamalan perfectly captures the essence of these stories, presenting a cinematic family that feels similar to our own.
Watching the End of the World
While not particularly different from the source material, Shyamalan uses the cinematic medium to his advantage when depicting the apocalypse. Eyewitness footage adds empathy to Leonard’s vague warnings of disaster. Tremblay’s novel effectively describes a massive tsunami washing over a crowded beach, but Shyamalan puts us there with footage presumably recorded on a cell phone. We join other beachgoers in marveling at the massive wave before turning to run from the wall of water rushing towards us. The footage ends as the camera is submerged by the tide giving us the horrifying experience of perishing because of Eric’s and Andrew’s refusal to choose.
Shyamalan uses a similar technique to show the third disaster: the shattered and falling sky. We pan through disaster footage of planes lying in burning heaps on the ground then move to a crowded balcony where someone is recording the disaster. One by one we watch as planes plummet to the earth, accompanied by thousands of screams coming from all around us. While the graphics of this destruction are a bit uneven, there’s no question that the experience of watching this unprecedented event is powerful. Shyamalan wisely chooses not to linger on footage of a deadly pandemic, trusting that we’ve already seen enough videos of hospitals jammed with dying patients to last a lifetime. Just the mention of a deadly virus sweeping through the country is enough to impart the horror of the second plague.
The power of this footage amplifies the necessity of the choice with which Eric and Andrew are presented. While reading Tremblay’s book, it’s possible to believe Andrew’s assertions that these tragedies are some sort of group delusion or horrifying coincidence, but seeing them with our own eyes removes all doubt. Rather than a prediction driven by fear, Shyamalan is clearly saying that the world will indeed end if Eric, Andrew, or Wen do not choose to die. By using an intimate point of view and tapping into the horrors we’ve all recently seen with our own eyes, Shyamalan makes us feel as if the family’s refusal to sacrifice themselves puts our own lives in danger as well.
The Sacrifices
Each time Eric and Andrew refuse to make a choice, one of the four invaders must take their place. Shyamalan captures the brutality of these deaths as described in the novel with the intended victim placing a white mask over their face before the remaining messengers beat them to death with their makeshift weapons. However, Shyamalan adds dialogue to what Tremblay describes as a mostly silent death by adding a ritualistic phrase seconds before each attack. While Tremblay’s Redmond merely says “thank you” before becoming the first to die for his cause, Shyamalan’s Redmond screams at Eric and Andrew, demanding that they watch every second of his demise. This dialogue specifically places his blood on the hands of Eric and Andrew, two men who want nothing at all to do with the horrors unfolding before them. Though it is the invaders themselves who are carrying out this horrific murder, Shyamalan takes the choice to kill Redmond away from the people holding the weapons and places it squarely on the actions of two men tied to chairs. In his afterword, Tremblay mentions the allure of abdicating responsibility for one’s own actions. With this small change, Shyamalan is painting Redmond as a victim and inviting the audience to ignore the fact that he dies because of his own choices.
Shyamalan does this again with the second sacrifice. Tremblay only shows us one of these ritual murders as the rest of the invaders die in the fray of the family’s struggle to escape. Adriane is the second to complete this barbaric ritual, but before her companions bludgeon her she gives her own persuasive speech. In begging Eric and Andrew to sacrifice their lives for her own, she reveals that she has a young son. She has joined this mission in hopes of stopping the vision of him burning alive that repeats in her head. If Tremblay’s Adriane has a son, she never reveals it and dies with an errant shot from Andrew’s gun without ever getting the opportunity to plead her case. This small change puts her in direct comparison to Eric and Andrew, whose choice is largely framed around the desire to create a better future for their own daughter. She is also telling Eric and Andrew that the survival of their non-traditional family puts her own child in danger.
Shyamalan makes one more addition to these scenes with the statement that “a portion of humanity has been judged.” This sentence, not present in Tremblay’s novel, further blames Eric and Andrew for their choice not to die. By adding this ominous assertion, Shyamalan is specifically placing responsibility for the apocalypse on the heads of the family being targeted. By refusing to sacrifice themselves, they are judging their own family as more important than the continuation of humanity and casting their own survival as more valuable than anyone else. Eric and Andrew simply don’t want to die, but Shyamalan paints this decision as selfish. By adding this simple sentence, he is giving control of the entire situation to Eric and Andrew and framing their decision to murder a member of their own family as the only compassionate choice.
A Child Shall Lead Them
Shyamalan’s version of the story begins to change with the death of Adriane before radically veering away from the source material in the final act. Tremblay’s Sabrina changes her mind about the actions she is taking and vows to help Eric and Andrew escape regardless of the consequences. Shyamalan does not give her the opportunity for this change of heart and instead has her die as she charges towards Andrew while he holds a gun. But her death is not the only dramatic change to Tremblay’s novel. The second act concludes with Andrew and Leonard struggling for control of the gun. While in both of their hands, a stray shot fires and hits Wen directly in the face, killing her instantly. Andrew and Eric are understandably inconsolable at the loss of their daughter, but Leonard has a life-changing reaction as well. He feels intense guilt for his actions, especially considering his promise that she will not be harmed in the story’s opening scene. When he dies in another struggle he is relieved to finally escape the crushing force of his sorrow.
Wen’s horrific death has another important effect on the original story; it removes her as a factor in her fathers’ decision to sacrifice themselves. Shyamalan’s ending sees Eric beg Andrew to shoot him specifically so that Wen, who survives the film, can have a better life. Not only does her literary death show that future generations will suffer because of this illogical desire for sacrifice, but it allows Eric and Andrew to choose to live simply for their own benefit. They just don’t want to die and Tremblay allows them to make this choice without considering any other factors. Wen’s survival in the film means that she will die in the coming apocalypse as well. By putting another child in danger, Shyamalan again paints her fathers’ choice to protect themselves as selfish.
At the End of the World
The final act of Tremblay’s novel ends with Sabrina accompanying Eric and Andrew then shooting herself while lost in one of her visions. She warns the couple that they will have only a few minutes to make a final sacrifice before the world begins to end. Shyamalan gives this death to Leonard, who delivers a similar warning. He slashes his own throat on the back porch of the cabin and bleeds to death in an intensely effective and heartbreaking sequence. Both versions of the story conclude with Eric and Andrew frantically deciding whether they should choose to die, but the outcomes of these conversations differ dramatically. Shyamalan’s Eric insists that Andrew kill him. He tells a beautiful story of an adult Wen who has a close relationship with her surviving father and has found someone to love her the way Eric and Andrew love each other. After screaming that the world does not deserve this sacrifice, Andrew reluctantly agrees. He shoots and kills his husband then goes to comfort his daughter who is waiting in a nearby treehouse. Wen asks if Eric saved everyone and the two emerge from the woods to find out.
At a roadside diner, they join a group of patrons gathered around a TV showing footage of the world dramatically getting better. A father describes the miraculous receding of waters that seemed certain to drown his two daughters and a relieved anchor reports that the remaining planes have landed safely. All thanks to Eric’s death. Couples in the diner call their own loved ones while Andrew and Wen watch, knowing they will never again be able to do the same. While some have framed this ending as a selfless sacrifice by a queer couple for a world that hates them, there’s no escaping the fact that we watch as the clouds part and the earth itself becomes safer due to the death of a queer character. Shyamalan is known for his twist endings, but the conclusion of Knock at the Cabin is unfortunately predictable. It depicts a world that constantly asks othered communities to sacrifice their happiness for the comfort of the majority.
Tremblay’s novel ends as Eric and Andrew stumble out of the woods. A storm is brewing overhead, but he makes sure to note that it could be an apocalyptic disaster or simply a summer storm soon to pass. The reader is left to decide if the world will indeed end because of a family’s decision to keep living. Shyamalan removes all ambiguity by making it explicitly clear that the God worshiped by the four strangers who knock at the cabin has demanded that Eric and Andrew sacrifice themselves. With subtle changes to the source material, he paints his characters as selfish for choosing not to die rather than exploring the possibility that the four invaders are wrong for demanding innocent blood.
In his afterword, Tremblay repeatedly asserts that he does not intend for the reader to sympathize with the invaders. His story concludes with a sentence he describes as a thesis statement for the novel: ”we go on.” His Eric and Andrew have chosen the sanctity of their love for each other over fear that their existence will cause the end of the world. He invites the reader to decide whether the world will actually end because of this choice, but declines to give a definitive answer. Shyamalan takes the decision out of our hands by tipping the scales against Eric and Andrew. Yes, he presents their love as real and valuable, but also expendable. Their misery is the cost of everyone else’s survival. By allowing the demands of a fearful majority to win, he explicitly shows us that life as we know it cannot continue without the destruction of a non-traditional family.
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