Starring Dave Bautista, Rupert Grint, Kristen Cui, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

Universal, out now

 

While vacationing, a girl and her parents are taken hostage by armed strangers who demand that the family make a choice to avert the apocalypse.

The greatest baggage that M. Night Shyamalan’s home invasion thriller brings to the screen is that it’s an M. Night Shyamalan film, and the expectation that it will have a clever twist ending. I’m not going to confirm whether or not there is a grand reveal, the main issue here is that the movie is ultimately unfulfilling.

Shyamalan has taken Paul Tremblay’s Bram Stoker Award-winning 2019 novel The Cabin at the End of the World, and alongside his co-writers Steve Sherman and Michael Sherman he has changed the ending to something that is anticlimactic. As the end credits rolled, the cinema patrons around me were of the same opinion – ‘Eh?’, ‘What was the point of that?’ and most damningly ‘What a waste of time!’

The ending just doesn’t land (a bit like the planes falling out of the sky) and muddies the message or moral of the story. It’s as frustrating as the Rapture nonsense of the director’s The Happening. As positives, Kristen Cui is excellent as young Wen, and Dave Bautista is intriguing as gentle giant Leonard, but I just didn’t buy Rupert Grint’s Redmond.

Verdict: We’ll have to wait a bit longer for the Shyamalan renaissance – this is in the lower tier of the director’s work and for fans of the book will be a crushing disappointment. 4/10

Nick Joy