Always Good Movies

Direction: M. Night Shyamalan
Country: USA

Usually stories that entail doubt and the end of the world are exciting, but that's not the case with Knock at the Cabin. This brand new by-the-numbers apocalyptic venture directed by M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, 1999; Unbreakable, 2000) comes with the seal of a self-important bore. Deficiently adapted from Paul Tremblay's novel, the screenplay is weak and twist-less, following a simple succession of almost identical events that made me ask myself: “do I really need to see this?”

A family of three is taken hostage in a remote cabin in the woods by four armed strangers who demand an impossible choice from them. We are paralyzed. Not by fear but tedium. The hybridization of Shyamalan's topics reaches a paroxysmal degree - disinformation and insane theories, obscure visionaries and cult extremism, isolation and horror, family and faith. And then some earthquakes triggering giant tsunamis, deadly virus outbreaks, multiple airline failures, and unstoppable wild fires add more fuel to an unbalanced mix that never burns. Implausible escapes and tons of sentimental bait make it even more monotonous and unconvincing.

This manipulative thriller only confirms that Shyamalan needs better ideas and smarter twists to overcome a creative crisis that has pestering him for decades. An artless film without the guts to bring the apocalyptic threat to life onscreen.

Direction: M. Night Shyamalan
Country: USA

M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass marks the last part of the Unbreakable trilogy, launched with Unbreakable in 2000 and followed with Split in 2016. This new thriller tries to funnel the two precedent story threads into a conclusion, but the problem is that I was unable to feel excitement or have any type of reward along the way. Shyamalan, 48, had his biggest success in 1999 with The Sixth Sense, and since then has been giving signs of creative constraints. Examples that testify what was just said are The Village, The Happening, and Lady In The Winter, all nonsense mystery movies.

In truth, the final chapter of the trilogy is also its worst part, a clunky superhero film fabricated with worn out procedures, where the thrills are so scarce or practically nonexistent that we want it to end before long. During the first 20 minutes, the director sort of promised to take us somewhere, but instead, he let it all dribble away, remaining in a fog of apathy that has absolutely no pay off in the end.

Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, and James McAvoy reprise their roles from the previous installments as the indestructible vigilante David Dunn, the murderous mastermind Elijah Price, and the multi-personality criminal Kevin Wendell Crumb, respectively. All three are locked in a mental hospital and defied by an ambitious and skeptical young psychiatrist, Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), who undertakes the byzantine task of proving that they are just ‘normal’ people, totally devoid of superpowers.

Problems with this film: the ideas simply don’t breathe, the narrative is more viscous than fluid, the dialogue is stiff, the connections are simplistic and amateurish, and the performances have no room to shine. The fact of the manner is that the film is so anti-climax and preposterous that not even the action scenes with The Beast succeeded in capturing my attention. To summarize, Glass would need to be completely reconsidered, script-wise, and then redone from scratch.