Review of Knock at the Cabin (2023) by Mauro_Lanari — 28 Apr 2023

(Mauro Lanari).

The disaster movie would like to distinguish itself from apocalyptic cinema ignoring that the term/concept of Apocalypse was born in the Judeo-Christian tradition to indicate the end of the world as a not ruinous but salvific cosmic event, a prerequisite for the advent of the divine and messianic kingdom. In theological terms: eschatology as soteriology. Instead, "in the cinematographic imagination, as in the common one, the word 'apocalypse' evokes more destruction than healing, more catastrophe than salvation, so that the latter assumes, for the most part, the aspect of pure escape. The subsistence of the world 'as it is', which for apocalyptic hope had appeared an unacceptable form of resignation, now risks to appear as asupreme achievement. What at the beginning seemed little, at the end it appears a lot" (Piero Stefani 2008). Shyamalan's fideistic home invasion is no exception, indeed he adds the Four Horsemen and the Christological sacrificial-expiatory rite, so he is not at all thought provoking and I have run out of popcorn supplies.