Comparing ‘Knock at the Cabin’ to ‘The Cabin at the End of the World’ by Paul Tremblay
About the Author
Paul Tremblay has won the Bram Stoker, British Fantasy, and Massachusetts Book awards and is the author of Survivor Song, The Cabin at the End of the World, Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, A Head Full of Ghosts, the crime novels The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland, and the short story collection, Growing Things and Other Stories. He has a master’s degree in mathematics and lives outside Boston with his family.
What is The Cabin at the end of the world abOUT?
A seven-year-old named Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake. Their closest neighbours are more than two miles in either direction along a rutted dirt road. One day, Wen is outside collecting grasshoppers and a big man named Leonard approaches her. Leonard tells her that he needs to speak to her parents.
Leonard then breaks into their cabin with his friends and tells them about a prophecy. The family was chosen to sacrifice someone in order to save the entire world from the apocalypse. Leonard and his friends were sent there to make sure they choose someone to sacrifice. And one by one they take their own lives to show them that the longer they don’t make a decision, disasters will occur.
Who directed Knock at the Cabin?
M. Night Shyamalan is a well-known director who has written the majority of his own stories for his movies. He has always written and directed his films and they have mainly been original pieces. This is the first time in a while that Shyamalan has adapted a story from a novel. He made it a situational thriller as the entire movie takes place in the cabin. He is known for placing a twist at the opportune moment in his films, but Knock at the Cabin surprisingly didn’t have one.
Who is in Knock at the Cabin?
Jonathan Groff as Daddy Eric
Ben Aldridge as Daddy Andrew
Kristen Cui as Wen
Dave Bautista as Leonard
Rupert Grint as Redmond
Abby Quinn as Adriane
Nikki Amuka-Bird as Sabrina
Is The Cabin at the End of the World better than Knock at the Cabin?
This may be the first time where the film makes the concept work better than the novel. Paul Tremblay’s novel is short yet it feels extremely long. The reason why the novel isn’t that strong is because of the way Tremblay structured his book. He didn’t let any situation breathe or even give his characters time to think. The Cabin at the End of the World suffered from the poor use of flashbacks to fill in the character development throughout the book because it takes place in a short period of time. It was hard to concentrate on the situation at hand because of the constant ramblings going on in the character's mind.
Shyamalan’s script for Knock at the Cabin cuts out the excess and is still able to show the development of these characters for what he had to work with. To put it in simple terms it’s science versus religion, and that’s what Shyamalan leans on throughout the film. In this case, less is more and it worked for the short runtime as well. There’s only so much you can do with a situational thriller and Shyamalan made it interesting. Tremblay’s novel was hard to follow and you almost lose the will to even care for the characters because there was so much going on in their head. In hindsight, knowing that Stephen King gave his stamp of approval to Tremblay for this novel is odd because it had no thrilling aspects.
Knock at the Cabin slightly edges The Cabin At the End of the World because Shyamalan elevated the script using strong visuals. The score, cinematography, direction and performances all worked together to make the story intense and the atmosphere uneasy. Unfortunately for Tremblay, Shyamalan also changed the ending because spiritually it made much more sense than the ambiguous ending Tremblay gave his novel. Shyamalan ended it in such a bittersweet way that was more thought-provoking than Tremblay turning his back on the characters he had developed for 200 pages. It felt empty towards the end because the themes he presented about life, death, and faith didn’t expand past the cabin.
What did you think about Knock at the Cabin? Let me know in the comments below and come join the discord for more discussions!
