Knock at the Cabin (2023).The categorical strictures of genre filmmaking have always done a disservice to M. Night Shyamalan. The director’s films are built upwards from otherwise earthbound drama, with their supernatural, comic-book tropes, and general suspense working as auxiliary elements rather than storytelling engines. This “formula”—a term Shyamalan justly bristles at—yields consistently fascinating results, deriving emotional resolve from narrative dissonance. This can be seen in everything from Unbreakable (2000) to The Happening (2008), which eschew conventional climaxes for parting acknowledgements of their characters’ virtues and weaknesses: the former film culminates with Bruce Willis’s technically invincible, reluctant hero, David Dunne, encountering his one debility, water, and is forced to rely on those he was initially saving to then save him, before the villain can be truly apprehended. It’s far from a perfect victory; instead, it’s a sober acceptance of responsibility, with action, violence, superficial excitement all secondary.
- 2/24/2023
- MUBI
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