It's a very tense scene. Director M. Night Shyamalan adds some unnecessary Dutch angles, a rare bad decision from someone known for his formal mastery, but thankfully they're an anomaly - the rest of the movie is beautifully shot. Most of the dialog comes almost verbatim from the novel the movie is based on (Paul Tremblay's The Cabin at the End of the Woods,) so that's another hurdle out of the way. It's some of the most effective filmmaking Shyamalan has done in ages, and I'm happy to say he mostly keeps up the good job. And while he takes his liberties with the source material, he manages to wrangle a good story out of it.
That's sadly not been a given for a very long time. I love the guy - he's made my all-time favorite superhero movie, and a couple other films that I rate pretty highly. (Also: the very worst superhero movie.) And seriously, even at his worst the dude can still direct beautifully. His stuff will always be at least interesting.
But it's not really a hot take that he's not always great at the whole storytelling side of things.
Back to the movie: young Mei runs back to the cabin, which was rented by her dads, Eric (Johnathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge), and quickly convinces them that they're in danger. Then Leonard and friends attack, staging what's possibly the most apologetic home invasion ever. You see, they're normal people too and don't have anything against Eric, Andrew and Mei. But a higher power has contacted them and given them a very important mission: the end of days is coming, and unless the family does something horrible of their own free will, the world is going to end.
It's a weird, but compelling premise - most of the movie (and the book) is basically a discussion between these two groups of seemingly reasonable people, each trying to get the other to see what they consider a basic, self-evident truth.
Because Mei's family is being held against their will, you get a lot of tension, escape attempts, and maybe a side of what seems like Stockholm syndrome. And because this is a horror movie, there are some gruesome twists and a possible metaphysical turn.
The acting is mostly superb, especially Dave Bautista as someone who's trying to do his utmost to be the voice of reason in very unreasonable circumstances, and his co-home invader Nikki Amuka-Bird who seems just as terrified as the people she's terrorizing. Shyamalan and co-writer Steve Desmond have pivoted a very bleak and unsparingly brutal book into a 15-rating thriller that keeps the violence short and mostly off-screen, which is probably the right call to make the movie commercially viable (though I can still dream about the Pascal Laughier adaptation).
It's a very faithful adaptation, too, at least until it diverges for the ending. Can't say I found it wholly satisfying, and it was a bit of a letdown after an almost stellar, suspenseful first hour. But it's an interesting take on the material, and it works: it's fair to say Shyamalan has made the material his, seeing how his ending ties into preoccupations he's grappled with in his movies as far back as my beloved Unbreakable. Honestly, I'd rather have that than an uninspired faithful-to-the-letter approach.
It also plays a neat trick on people who know the novel, mining a ridiculous amount of tension out of an impending event that never happens. Well played.
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