KNOCK AT THE CABIN

Twisty-turny storyteller M. Night Shyamalan is at it again with Knock At The Cabin, a woods-bound, home-invasion horror movie that morphs into something totally unexpected. Here the modern-day master of suspense talks us through his process, revealing his secrets... but not those of his WTF movie.

- JAMIE GRAHAM

W hich of my other movies is Knock At The Cabin in the ballpark of? The closest, I think, is Signs, because both movies are confined, to some extent, and they’re both populated by such

loveable families at the centre of apocalyptic events. I do think that you fall in love with both of those families. You laugh with them, are scared for them. You feel connected.

You know, the author of the book, Paul Tremblay, wrote it right around the time Trump was elected. He was feeling certain things about the world. It’s really interesting that maybe he wrote it then, and I’m making a different version of the story here. It’s a wonderful discussion that we’re all going to have when you watch the movie. Is humanity worth saving? Are we good? The human experiment – is this working? The story is about a girl [Kristen Cui] and her parents [Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge]. They’re vacationing and they answer the door to four strangers [Dave Bautista, Rupert Grint, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Abby Quinn] who give them a terrible choice to make. I think the things that I’m drawn to when I think of my own ideas, or, in this case, an adaptation, it’s taking genres and then bending them in new ways, or changing genres from what you thought you were watching. That’s the fun of audiences, for me. They come in thinking they’re watching something, and it changes and moves.

How much do we give away? That is always the conversation as I’m making something, and then when I’m talking to Universal, because they’ve released a lot of my movies recently, the last four or five. The conversation is: “Hey, these are the things that are for the audience when they go to the movies, and these are the things that you can sell the movie on.”