M. Night Shyamalan on the joy of smaller films, why he hates sequels and what makes Dave Bautista special
The Knock At The Cabin director is 30 years into his career and still making risky films—even if he has to pay for them himself
Film Features Dave Bautista
Few directors are as idiosyncratic and successful as M. Night Shyamalan. Dusting off the “twist guy” expectations he received in the wake of 1999’s The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan has spent the last decade following his whims, taking risks, and challenging himself: he completed an unlikely superhero trilogy, dipped his toe in found footage, and shepherded an ambitious television project at Apple TV+.
Like 2021’s Old, Shyamalan’s latest, Knock At The Cabin, is a single-location thriller about parents and children and love and sacrifice, set against biblical stakes and played with intense sincerity. Armed with yet another fantastic cast that includes Dave Bautista, Rupert Grint, Jonathan Groff, and newcomer Kristen Cui, he’s crafted an unlikely and unapologetic apocalyptic thriller for audiences to white-knuckle through. The A.V. Club spoke to Shyamalan about his new movie, finding inspiration in risk-taking, and why Bautista was the only guy for the job.
The A.V. Club: So many of your films are about parent-child relationships. What is it about a child’s perspective that is so crucial to the way you construct a movie?
M. Night Shyamalan: I feel they’re the closest to the way I feel about things. In some ways, they see things clearer. Or, at least, I believe in the version of the world that children see. There’s something more accurate about the way they see the world as wondrous or the way they open up to individuals.
If you think about the opening scene of Knock At The Cabin, [Cui’s character Wen] is alone, and then this giant [Dave Bautista] comes and sits down with her. As we watch as adults, it’s very disturbing. But the child character is seeing something in Dave’s character that is clear to her, and she sees something else in him. She sees a fellow child.
AVC: There’s such an interesting back and forth that they have in that scene where the shots are matching. So they have a connection almost immediately. How did you build on that connection throughout the rest of the movie?
MNS: I don’t want to get too much into cinema. I might bore everybody.
AVC: Not our readers. We want to hear it.
MNS: [Laughs] In that scene, I canted the camera in extreme close-ups to convey a sense of intimacy between the two of them. It’s a very unusual sequence because I have them looking at the camera, looking down the lens, so it’s already unnatural how their connection is. They have an immediate kind of soul connection, which I’m conveying through that. And I do it again later at the end of the movie with two other characters.
This language of seeing in each other’s souls is that moment. And yet the camera is canting as the information is happening because Wen’s experiencing two things in that scene, which is “I’m really connected to this individual,” and the second thing is, “he’s not telling me something very, very bad.” So as he’s talking to her, something very, very bad is growing, and it keeps shifting the axis.
AVC: Your budgets have decreased in the last 10 years. You’ve made several single-location films that have shown a new side to your work. Why did you make the jump?
MNS: I came to this realization when I was thinking about how to continue my career that I’m really not enjoying being in the system. I think they’re beating what’s really good in me out of me. I don’t really care about money if it means that I have to give up something of myself to do it. I also realized that most of the movies that I love are very contained movies, so let me just pay for them myself and work with new people, and then I’ll make it. And if they want to release it at that point, they can release it, you know? And that’s the relationship that I’m going to have with the industry.
I want to take giant risks and what’s been wonderful is that most of the time, my movies are in profit after three days of release in the movie theater. Maybe it’s my “immigrant me” that wants everyone to be okay. A responsibility that my partners, even my distribution partners, are winning every time. And so I get to take huge risks, and they get to win and feel safe and support us. I think that’s the healthiest way artists and commerce can coexist.
AVC: Outside of the Unbreakable trilogy, you haven’t made sequels. Are there other movies you’ve made that you’d like to revisit and maybe expand upon?
MNS: I don’t know how to do that without giving up the ideas that I have in my head. To do these last two movies, Old and Knock At The Cabin, I had to shove the next movies down a little bit, and so now I’m back-ordered. I have, like, three movie ideas that I’m dying to do.
I used to fear that there was an expiration date on those, meaning that they wouldn’t represent me. But Split talked me out of it. When I did Split, whatever it was, 19 years after I got the idea, it just came out in the new version of me. I realized, “Compelling ideas are compelling ideas, and they will reignite you in your new language wherever you are.” So at least I have some peace with regard to that.
But no, I don’t really get excited about (sequels). In fact, the thing that usually draws people to sequels is exactly what turns me off, which is the safety of it. I just—ugh. And even if I was talking to myself, like the idea of “am I doing it because I’m going to make money or”—God, that’s so repulsive. For me, I want you guys to tear me to shreds. I want to risk it all—all the time. That’s what’s fun about being an artist and wanting to be a beginner every single time.
AVC: Speaking of risks, this is a huge role for Dave Bautista, who is fantastic in the movie. Was there a specific movie that you saw and said, “that’s definitely the guy”? What inspired you to think that this role was for him?
MNS: Blade Runner 2049. That’s what did it for me. I knew it when I saw it; that guy was special. I wrote it down. Who is that? I looked in the credits and said, “I got to remember this guy.”
I tell this to everyone; your actions should be deeply what you believe in. And so, Dave, doing that movie, fighting to be in that movie, begging [director Denis Villeneuve] to be in that movie, and then delivering in that moment, he didn’t know it, but that was where his career was going to take off and be everything he wanted it to be.
It’s another example, even for myself, of making sure you know what you value. No matter how small, no matter what anybody says. “Why would you do that small little thing in that little movie?” Well, it’s telling the world what you believe in, and then that comes back to you. And in this case, it came in the form of this story. There’s only one person in the world who could play it, a giant who can do 30 pages of monologues. And it’s like, well, who could do that? And it was David Bautista.
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I hope Dave Bautista has a business card that says, “Giant who can do 30 pages of monologues.”
Bautista is one of the few dudes I can imagine who can live the dichotomy between fearsome and cuddly. Where he can crush your skull with his bare hands and then take his dog out to get his walkies, because pup-pup sure does love his walkies.
Its honestly kind of surprising that he is one of the few wrestlers turned actors who has not done one of those silly kids movies where he ends up as a nanny or what not. Batista may be the only one that could actual pull that kinda thing off.
I never saw him during his wrestling days but he just seems SO different from the Dwayne Johnsons and John Cenas of the world. Like he knows how to be quiet. Those two, especially Rock, tend to get pretty broad.
Cena goes broad but also will let himself be a fool on screen. Johnson is so obsessed with his image that he has become boring. Black Adam made me realize that any hint that he could be an good actor is now gone. Early in his career he tried some stuff but now all he can be on film is the biggest bad ass who is so much better then everyone else.
Don’t get me wrong, I actually love Cena because he doesn’t take himself too seriously and is fully prepared to lean into his himbo looks. Also agree on Johnson. He plays various iterations of himself.
He did! It’s called Spy Kid!
stuber is also close enough.
He definitely hasn’t done a kid’s movie, per se, but he did do that My Spy movie. That one has him bantering with a kid while he does action stuff, I didn’t see it.
He has actually: My Spy.
I wish you had asked him why he tacked that godawful final scene onto the end of “Unbreakable.” It was like he forgot to film an entire sequence and decided instead to wrap it up in three minutes one day while everybody was on the set.
They’ve changed the narrative over the years, but when the movie first came out M. Night said he couldn’t get past the first act of Unbreakable, so he decided to stretch the first act out into a full-length movie. It ended that way because he just plain ran out of ideas.
Did anyone tell him that is not how you make a movie. Unbreakable is a movie that goes from pretty great to terrible in one splash screen full of text. Then we got Split and it was like “Maybe he is gonna redeem this all in the end”. Then he opened our mouths and took a giant shit in it and said “This is my movie Glass, enjoy” and ran off
That’s precisely what it seems like, too.
I recently decided to give Old a chance, thinking perhaps Shyamalan had come a long way since The Happening. I was painfully mistaken. In fact, I can’t think of a single aspect of the film worth saving. The dialogue in particular, sounded like a terrible English dub of a foreign film script written by someone who doesn’t know how real humans interact. This man should no be allowed to make any movies, let alone write his own scripts.
I had a great time with Old – I appreciate any movie that starts with such a high-concept premise and then does literally every single thing it can with it, and Shyamalan brought some tremendously effective camerawork and breathlessly-paced setpiece sequences.
That said, he is a terrible screenwriter. It’s a bit of a James Cameron situation where you’ve got a guy who is obviously gifted in his ability to envision an entire film shot-by-shot in his head, who knows exactly how he wants every moment of the picture executed…but when he sits down to bang out the script, it’s like he’s never heard a normal human conversation in his life. Shyamalan would do well to bring in a co-writer just to give his scripts a polish pass and round out the rough edges where he stumbles.
The strange thing is that The Sixth Sense didn’t seem to have such bad dialogue.
As usual, decent premise, awful execution.
Opposite reaction for me. I finally watched it a few weeks ago and man, that film was completely wild. I’m not saying it was great–it certainly had a ton of flaws, but it was hugely entertaining. I’m really enjoying Shyamalan’s schlocky B-movie phase.
It was good until the inane ending.
Let me defend the ends honor. It brought me to tears. Sometime you just embrace the schlock.
Really? That all of that was just some stupid, stupid, stupid metaphor for medical ethics? You like an explanation that makes the movie retroactively make less sense? A suspension of disbelief that creates some super elaborate technology and extra evil, but abandons most of what makes that kind of data usable (controls, larger sample sizes, the ACTUAL ABILITY TO PRESENT THE DATA TO THE REGULATORY AGENCIES (the actual fucking point of doing clinical testing), etc.)? In a world in which that technology existed AND in which ethics didn’t exist, that would still be nonsensical.No explanation whatsoever would have been infinitely more sensible than that absolutely idiotic attempt at a clever twist. I enjoyed the movie up until that point, when I realized I hate it.God, and I thought the Village and the Happening were dumb.
I didn’t think Old was that bad, but the dialogue did not sound good.
I skipped Old. I remember being surprised by Split and the twist at the end got me excited because I like 99% of Unbreakable(all but the absolutely awful ending). Then I watched Glass and was like “Oh yeah, I hate his movies” and was happily back to just reading the twist ending on Wikipedia.
i thought it had some fun scary/gross moment and the rapper name ‘mid sized sedan’ is probably the funniest thing he’s ever come up with.
Shyamalan seems to be on a roll for adapting great source material into dreck. First Sandcastle and now The Cabin at the End of the World. Sandcastle, the critically acclaimed graphic novel that Old is based on, is fucking fantastic. Shyamalan’s version remove’s everything that is good about it. Sandcastle is both a rumination about age, youth, racism and how a random group of people deal with such an inexplicable thing happening to them. Some resign themselves to what they see as inevitable, some fuck, some kill themselves, parents struggle to explain to their sudden teenage children anything about anything because they were five years old a few hours ago. It ends with the child, that Shyamalan inexplicably killed off, building a sandcastle on the beach, while the reader knows she’s going to age quickly alone. Shyamalan’s version is sooooo far from the point of the source material you have to question, what’s the point of adapting it if you’re going to ignore it? The story wasn’t about any explanation or twist. The question of why people were aging doesn’t need to be answered becaue that’s not what it’s about. Also: Shyamalan unironically thought Mid-Sized Sedan would be a rapper name. I don’t know how anyone read that script and was like, “yeah, Mid-Sized Sedan totally makes sense and certainly doesn’t betray you complete lack of knowledge of rap at all.” I guess that’s what self financing gets you. When it comes to Knock at the Cabin, Shyamalan has already said:“From go, when this book came to me to produce, I felt very strongly that the story can’t go the way it was written. It just can’t, it can’t go that way for me, I have my feelings about that.” SO WHY EVEN ADAPT IT? Fuck.“So when the book came back to me and they said, ‘Would you be interested?’, I said, ‘Oh yeah’, because I was so taken with the setup and so I said, ‘I am gonna do a different version of this book. I won’t call the movie the same, the fans of the book can just have that and then this is a different artist, interpreting it differently’.” From reviews, that difference changes the whole last third of the book and is more of his Christian preaching.
Yes, although relatively minor, unironically calling a rapper “Mid-Size Sedan” was also a baffling. He could’ve turned it into comedic relief, but Shyamalan is humorless, completely devoid of self-awareness. At least The Happening had a some unintended humor.
The Happening is a gem of unintended humor. Wahlberg’s comments at a press event for The Fighter sum it up. Speaking of Amy Adams, who was up for the role Deschanel played:We had actually had the luxury of having lunch before to talk about another movie and it was a bad movie that I did. She dodged the bullet. And then I was still able to … I don’t want to tell you what movie … alright “The Happening.” Fuck it. It is what it is. Fucking trees, man. The plants. Fuck it. You can’t blame me for not wanting to try to play a science teacher. At least I wasn’t playing a cop or a crook.Which actually speaks to MNS’s scripts and direction. Wahlberg is far from a great actor but good scripts and directors have gotten good performances out of him. MNS’s scripts and direction are like actor entropy. Only really good actors even have a chance to scrape a decent performance out of his non-human dialogue.
I am not here to trash M. Night Syamalan, but I am fascinated by his career and specifically how he has managed to remain culturally, commercially and artistically relevant despite a track record far worse than scores of other directors who have been expelled from Hollywood. Whatever you think of his films, there must be something about him or his writing or his style that keeps people engaged in his career. Rotten Tomatoes is a flawed system, but it’s not without value, and of Shyamalan’s 13 movies, only two have scored above 75%, while eight are at or below 50%. Simply put, he cranks out movies that people appear to not enjoy, and yet keep lining up for more of. That is a fascinating dichotomy and I hope someone more knowledgeable than me can help explain the apparent paradox.
I’m not a huge fan, but I think for most people he’s a Name that they recognize and are willing to give a chance. Whether I think his movies are great or not, they must make a profit for him to keep making them, as he points out in the interview. Film makers can be profitable without being critical darlings, I think most people who are into movies know what to expect out of his movies for better or worse and I think for a lot of people (including me) that’s probably fairly low expectations at this point, but there’s probably a lot of people out there who are just like, “ Oh, a new M. Night movie, probably scary and a good time, let’s see it.”
I honestly thing the fact that he has such a unique name for a Hollywood Director, Especially when he started, has helped keep him relevant. He was also one of those guys big into building his own brand early on so his name was always prominently attached to his works.I also think after it became clear he was “the twist” guy, a lot of people go into his movies just trying to guess the twist and its sorta a game for them. Its almost not important that he misses nearly as much as he hits with audiences, its all about what weird shit he does in the ending.
Yeah and the 50% of people who like his movies make up enough of a market to support the small-budget productions he has settled into. I expect he’s content hitting singles and doubles.
I actually forgot how many of his movies I’ve seen. Completely forgot about The Visit, and that I had seen it. But at the time it creeped the fuck outta me.
Think it’s partly the fact that he usually produces original works. so you never know what you’re going to get. Add to that the occasional twist, and it’s enticing to get people to cinemas. Then there’s the hope that this could be the return to form.
I think it’s the factor where a lot of his movies are pretty good in the beginning but then end really badly, and for enough people it ends being watchable enough that it keeps the residuals coming in. Like the movies come somewhere close enough to cult classic status to make it worthwhile for investment, but aren’t good enough to become actual cult classics. For every one of his movies that I thought were terrible, I know 2 people who say “Oh it wasn’t that bad! I like watching it.”
They seem pretty small budget, which would help sell the studios even if he hasn’t had a massive hit in a while.
What’s not mentioned is that after his blockbusters, he financed a lot of his films. He cleared 60 million on Split. Dude is loaded. Studios came running back, too.He’s made money on all of his movies.
now explain kevin smith, who is worse on every measurable level.
I wrote this guy off after he trashed Avatar. Never going back.
That’ll show him!Jokes aside, I was really flabbergasted at how bad his version was. But I appreciate that he’s willing to take his licks.
For me and I would assume for most people: his first 3 movies were so excellent that I root for him each new movie.
– the first movie of his was a cultural phenomenon- the second two were still pretty decent and did well and got a lot of publicity- from those movies, he managed to turn his name into a brand. People saw the name and expected a type of experience, which sold well- he then made a number of very poorly received movies to diminishing returns. Some of these are widely reviled (avatar: the last Airbender)- he has since starting staging a bit of a come back, in part through cheaper, more modest films (and throwbacks to his early works) that are at least partially self funded
It’s not much of mystery. After too many high budget studio film debacles, ending with After Earth, studios stopped giving him gobs of money to produce box office bombs. So he shifted to much lower budget self financed movies where there’s almost no risk for any studio or distributor to pick it up, as it’s near impossible for the movies not to be profitable. He’s explained that he took huge loans out, with the properties he bought earlier in his career as collateral, to start financing everything after After Earth, because studios weren’t going to fund him anymore. He then takes the profits (after studio marketing and distribution costs) from his last movie to pay down the loans and finance the next movie.To give you an idea, his movies from After Earth on, budget vs domestic box office (using domestic BO because that’s where studios actually make their money): After Earth: $130mm vs $60mmThe Visit: $5mm
vs $65mmSplit: $9m
vs $138mmGlass: $20mm
vs $111mmOld: $18mm
vs $48mm Knock at the Cabin: $20mm vs ? So you can see where MNS shifted into his niche. Single location productions to keep costs down and self financing makes studios feel safe that they’ll get a decent profit for their investment. I will say Old had a higher budget than I would have guessed, and is a complete bomb when you factor in marketing and distribution costs. MNS didn’t make much, if anything on that. Knock at the Cabin’s budget is pretty surprising too. Knock at the Cabin’s BO better be in the $100mm range for MNS’s sake.
not sure where (or even if) you can find VOD/rental sales but i imagine old did particularly well there. also studios do make SOME money on international box office, its not like he saw $0 from the 40+ million it did internationally.
Reliable VOD rentals/sales are pretty much impossible to come by unfortunately. Yes, MNS did make some money on that international BO, but it would’ve been much less than the domestic BO. Domestic BO averages about 60-65% of ticket revenue going to the studio and distributor (unless you’re Disney that demands 80% or more in opening weeks). Internationally that drops to 20-40%, depending on the country and the studio and distributors are always made whole first. I’d expect that MSN gets a much bigger cut through his production company due to him being the primary financier but it’s still a cut from a smaller pie.
Wow, had no idea Split was made on such a small budget.
I’ve always thought that whether the movie is terrible or amazing (there’s no real middle ground with the guy) you can rely on a Shyamalan movie to be uniquely his. the combination of his distinctive camerawork, bizarre dialogue, oddly inclusive version of spirituality and seeming inability to do anything else than exactly what his muse tells him to do means you can’t mistake a Shyamalan movie for anybody else. that means something especially in today’s factory line blockbuster era
I think his best days and films (Signs, Sixth Sense, Unbreakable) are behind him, but reading this interview, I can really appreciate his artistic cred. He’s willing to crank out movie after movie about his insane imagination, and some of them actually work. But the point is, he’s not afraid of failure or of taking huge swings just to get his point across, and that’s exactly the kind of directors we need.
It helps that he always gets a lion’s share of Pennsylvania’s film tax credit money since he’s been instrumental to southeast PA’s film industry almost from its start. They love him there. So that’s money in the bank on day one for his investors.Source: Me, who dealt with the state‘s tax credit program for a couple decades.
At times I get frustrated with the content, but I always seem to enjoy watching his films for their technical merit.I’d argue that M Night is a really good film maker, who completely understands the process. When the nuts and bolts are all in place, there is an objective quality to his work. I actually don’t think he’s the best director of dramatic action, but he gets good performances. What he is brilliant at is setting up scenes and working with the DP. He’s also really good at pace, which (again) is a sign he sees the bigger picture through each step of the process. Directors and film makers who get bounced out of the system often do not get the process right, and actually fail at film production. I’d say Shyamalan’s failings are more subjective. I think people appreciate good film making, even if they get frustrated with characters/stories/outcomes
Others have covered the budget aspect well, another thing to consider is that what’s considered a good RT score for horror movies is lower than other genres. Imo, higher than 60% is pretty good and if the premise sounds interesting I might still watch it if it’s 40% or above. I think there’s more latitude given by these audiences to weird or uneven material, there just needs to be a good hook which he has no problem with. He’s also had some pretty big to respectable successes that the flops haven’t totally tarnished his name.
He’s not wrong about Bautista and Blade runner. Like most people I only knew him as Drax (I’m not a wrestling guy) and his quiet performance, including in the related short, was mesmerizing.
Bautista’s scene in Blade Runner is amazing.
Absolutely. From his body language to his facial expressions to his line delivery, the nuance in his performance astonished me.
I’d never even heard of Bautista till Guardians, but man oh man. He’s a really good actor, and is obviously interested in doing more than what he’s been doing. Even in silly stuff (that My Spy thing) he’s effective – never seems to call it in. He was great in Blade Runner, great in Glass Onion….
So. Even though I’ve never really liked much that Shyamalan has done, I’m definitely going to watch this one when I can.
He is great in Stuber also, which is a really funny movie.
He has more meh movies than successful or failures. As long as he just goes for telling a good story then it’s worth watching once. Using twists as a gimmick was unnecessary in a lot of his movies. If it feels more shoehorned in instead of feeling natural, then he’s lucky if his movie ends in just being meh. Now going off topic to something more fun is Dave Bautista. Bautista told Page Six that he’d love to star in a rom-com but he’s never gotten a single offer to do so. He said in that interview, “I know I’m not your typical rom-com lead, I’m a little rough around the edges. But I always, you know, I look in the mirror and I say, I ask myself, ‘Am I that unattractive? Is there something that unappealing about me that excludes me from these parts?’”I laughed at that and thought, don’t worry Dave. The Hallmark Channel this year will give you a 12 movie rom-com deal. One rom-com per month. Each with a cheesy title based off of the holiday on that month. If Hallmark rejects making a rom-com with you, then maybe you can have your Sad Keanu Day.
I would argue post Sixth Sense there are really only two movies he made that tried for a real “twistless” story and those were The Last Air bender and After Earth. Probably his two worst movies
Not all twists are the same. Compare the Visit’s sensible if predictable twist we are supposed to see coming before the characters do with Old’s completely nonsensical “explanation” that retroactively ruins the whole experience.
Shyamalan just wishes he was Neil Breen.
Breen is about to drop his latest gem very soon. https://cade-crossing.com/
I cannot wait.
I’m still mad how he treated David Dunn
He done David Dunn dirty.
I tell this to everyone; your actions should be deeply what you believe in. And so, Dave, doing that movie, fighting to be in that movie, begging [director Denis Villeneuve] to be in that movie, and then delivering in that moment, he didn’t know it, but that was where his career was going to take off and be everything he wanted it to be.As Bautista’s resident dick-rider on this site, I’m happy to read this from a prominent director. I remain continually impressed by how this actor with a giant physical presence is making his presence felt in other ways by projecting his passion for the craft of acting. He just keeps getting better and better.
I made a similar comment up-thread. He crushed it in BR, where he seemed to almost consider his physicality a burden. I guarantee a whole lot of directors and producers had their opinions of him changed with that one role.
he’s really really great in this. I’ve been impressed with him for a while but it feels like this movie was just made for Dave to knock out of the park
I absolutely adored the novel – and i don’t think it’s massively been marketed as based on a novel. Seems odd that’s not mentioned by him or the author of the piece – and from what i’ve read elsewhere with him, it seems to be marketed as ‘from the mind of the Sixth Sense’ etc. Fair play for the casting of Batistuta though. In my head reading it i had a younger Vincent D’Onofrio – but as soon as i saw Batistuta in it i knew it was perfect casting
I look forward to the ten minute flashback sequence, backed by frantic strings, that shows all the contortions required throughout the movie to force the twist to make some sort of sense.I was a fan, even through The Village, most of which I’ll still defend. But even that had the too-long climactic series of revelations.
I really believe there is way more thematic richness in his movies to fill the comment section with “I don’t like him”, mostly after an interview where he explains his themes.
His static style was incredibly well suited to Unbreakable, emulating comic book frames. You can imagine the sequence where Dunn is being questioned in the hospital as a patient bleeds out in the foreground, illustrated as a nine panel page with little changing but the blood stain.But he does that too often. Above, he talks about the actors looking down the camera and calls it “unusual”. He does it ALL THE TIME, to the point that it takes me out of the movie. Here we go, MNS directing his actors down the lens again. Again, it’s been very effective a few times — the stabbing scene in The Village for example. But do it too much, and those expert uses start to just seem like happy coincidences.
I just want to say that if there was an alien in my living room and a baseball bat hanging on the wall five feet away from me, I wouldn’t require a message from beyond the grave to know I should whack the living shit out that alien with the baseball bat.
I give the guy props: he made an adult diaper as scary as anything in the Exorcist.
I’m disappointed that there’s no mention, once again, of Paul Tremblay or his novel “The Cabin at the End of the World” of which this film is an adaptation.
There’s a lot of talk in the horror literature community about how none of the promotional material makes any mention of the book, right down to giving it a _worse_ title, and I’d have loved for you to ask him about it.