In director M. Night Shyamalan's latest twisty thriller, "Knock at the Cabin," as in the apocalyptic novel on which it's based, Paul Tremblay's "The Cabin at the End of the World," a family vacationing in the countryside is visited by four armed strangers who offer them a terrible choice.
Led by the gentle and imposing Leonard (Dave Bautista), the assailants tell 7-year-old Wen (Kristen Cui) and her doting dads, Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and Eric (Jonathan Groff), that prophetic visions have shown them that the world will soon end, and that only their family can save it — by killing one of their own.
For much of the film, the screenplay, by Shyamalan, Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman, hews faithfully to the tense beats and details of Tremblay's novel ... until it doesn't. The film diverges from the novel's conclusion and, perhaps, what meaning viewers will take from the story. They're changes the author himself admits he's still processing, days after watching the film for the first time at its New York City premiere.
