Editorials
‘Knock at the Cabin’ – 7 Things We Learned from the Blu-ray Release
The latest taut horror-thriller from M. Night Shyamalan, Knock at the Cabin has arrived on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD. While there’s no audio commentary, the home video releases include four making-of featurettes: “Choosing Wisely: Behind the Scenes of Knock at the Cabin,” “Tools of the Apocalypse,” “Drawing a Picture,” and “Kristen Cui Shines a Light.”
Totalling about 35 minutes, these extras feature insight from Shyamalan, actors Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Abby Quinn, Rupert Grint, and Kristen Cui, and several key crew members.
Here are seven things I learned from the Knock at the Cabin Blu-ray…
1. Knock at the Cabin came to Shyamalan as a producing opportunity.
Shyamalan originally received the Knock at the Cabin script by Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman as a producing opportunity via his Blinding Edge Pictures before deciding to work on the screenplay and board the project as director.
“It organically came into my life,” Shyamalan explains. “It came as a producing opportunity. I think the premise of the book just stayed with me so much, and I started to kind of fall in love with the idea and just let my mind feely go to, ‘How would I tell this story?’ or ‘What would be best for this story?'”
2. The premise resonated with Shyamalan and the cast.
!['Knock at the Cabin' Trailer Proves the Apocalypse Is REAL! [Video]](https://i0.wp.com/bloody-disgusting.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Screen-Shot-2022-12-25-at-1.56.44-PM.png?resize=740%2C398&ssl=1)
“The idea of telling large-scale, Biblical stories but in modern times and in modern settings is resonating with me,” enthuses Shyamalan. “Knock at the Cabin is that, is this kind of incredible opportunity for us to experience this gigantic, global, Biblical story, but just through the experience of a family of three.”
The cast was also captivated by the material. “When I read the script, I was breathless through the entire thing. I felt great anxiety and confusion and excitement and shock and horror,” exclaims Groff. Amuka-Bird adds, “I was gripped from beginning to end. I was terrified.”
“It kind of combined two of my biggest nightmares: home invasion and the apocalypse,” Grint notes. “It stayed with me a long time, because it forces you to kind of put yourself in a situation and think what would you do.”
3. Knock at the Cabin deviates from the source material.
Knock at the Cabin is based on Paul Tremblay’s 2018 novel, The Cabin at the End of the World. While the two set-ups are essentially identical, the movie’s third act radically deviates from the source material.
“It’s very unusual, in that we adapted a book to make this movie but essentially went in an entirely different direction around the midway point of the story. That weighed on me a little bit,” confesses Shyamalan. “In my mind, the story needed and wanted to go this way very strongly, and in fact that was the exciting part of the challenge. Can I make a movie about a very horrific Sophie’s choice, and can I get the audience there to make that decision with the main characters?”
4. The film’s gay representation was important to Shyamalan.
Although Knock at the Cabin deviates from the book, Shayamlan maintained the central characters being a same-sex couple with an adopted daughter. It was important to him to cast gay actors in the parts of the fathers.
“Telling a story that would normally have been told with a typical husband-wife story and having it told with these two people; super, super moving. As a viewer, watching as we shot this and made this, I was feeling things that I never felt before for protagonists. I was seeing dynamics that were fresh and new.”
The representation also impacted the actors. “Something that attracted me to it and that I love about it is that it’s about a same-sex parented family, and they are central to the story. Their queerness is part of the story but it’s not the story,” Aldridge notes. “We are pinching ourselves that we get to be in this Hollywood horror movie as gay actors playing gay characters in an M. Night Shyamalan movie,” Groff says.
5. Shyamalan meticulously storyboarded the entire film.
While his visual style constantly evolves, Shyamalan meticulously storboards every movie so he knows exactly what he wants and needs before stepping on set. Brick Mason — Shyamalan’s go-to storyboard artist since The Sixth Season, with other credits including The Amazing Spider-Man 2, A Beautiful Mind, and True Detective — is no stranger to the process:
“When he’s finished writing the script, storyboarding is the next big phase, and he’s converting those words into pictures. He wants to see in his head every single shot. In the end, when he gets it the way he wants it, he sticks [to the storybaords] way more closely than pretty much any director that I’ve ever worked with.”
Shyamalan explains, “I’ve spent five, six, seven, eight months alone thinking about that, and every color, every choice, every fabric, every frame, every single frame has been chosen to maximize the emotional impact of the characters.”
Mason continues, “By the time he’s done storyboarding and he’s explored the emotions of every single character in every single scene, the storyboards are in a sense like a bible to him for that project.”
6. Shyamalan does not shoot standard film coverage.
Since the storyboarding process affords Shyamalan the knowledge of exactly what he needs, he does not shoot standard film coverage (a wide master shot, close ups, etc. for every scene). He rehearses with the cast like a play and then aims to get three good takes each with something unique.
“I want to feel that electricity in the performance, that unexpected thing of realness, and I want it three times. Why I want it three times is, there’s a relationship to everything that we’re putting next to each other. That thing that was so beautiful-angry or so beautiful-vulnerable or beautiful-soft or -scared won’t play with the previous scene or the previous thing. The juxtaposition, it’s always about the family and how they interact together, so I try to get at least three amazing takes of slightly different colors so that I have a little bit of pliability. This color vs. this color creates this experience.
“Sometimes you only get one that really has that electricity, and when I have to move onto another shot with that feeling that I have one — and it’s rare that I would move on — I’m very nervous, because I know there’s a high probability that that won’t be the perfect color against this other thing, and I have nowhere to go because I don’t do coverage.”
7. Shyamalan challenged the art department to design makeshift weapons for the film.
Seeing them as emblematic of the movie’s core, Shyamalan placed an importance on the makeshift weapons that the strangers carry. He described it as a bake off, challenging the art department to concoct deadly combinations of tools, farming equipment, and othet sharp objects.
“We started putting ourselves in the character that is making the weapon, and it was like, if it’s hard for us, it doesn’t make sense for the film,” explains production designer Naaman Marshall. “We’re talking about people who just got the vision. That started changing our techniques about how we went about it, and it very much became about finding parts that were visual, that they might have seen in a vision. It started driving the actual visual of the weapons by the process at which we thought these people would be able to make them.”
Each of the four weapons — nicknamed by the crew as cowkiller, sleeper, morning star, halberd — were crafted in firm, medium and soft versions for various uses.
Knock at the Cabin is available now on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD via Universal.
Editorials
Before ‘The Blair Witch Project’, ‘Alien Autopsy’ Showed How Real Found Footage Could Feel
The line separating artist from con man is a lot thinner than you might initially believe. While I think we can all agree that lying for the sake of profit is actively malicious behavior, isn’t it also true that the faux documentary aspect of The Blair Witch Project is half the reason why that film became such a cultural phenomenon? After all, if there’s one thing filmmakers have in common with stage magicians, it’s that misleading and misdirecting audiences is simply part of the job.
That’s why I’ve developed a habit of mostly ignoring the moral quandaries behind many of film and television’s biggest “hoaxes” in favor of appreciating the narrative elements that drive productions like Mermaids: The Body Found and even Animal Planet’s highly underrated The Cannibal in the Jungle. However, if there’s a definitive case of a highly publicized broadcast fooling the world into taking it seriously, it has to be Fox’s infamous 1995 TV special Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction.
It’s been over three decades since that eerie footage first haunted television screens right at the peak of the ’90s ufology craze, and in that time, the video has taken on a life of its own. From countless parodies and references in everything from The X-Files to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (as well as John Dower’s recently released tell-all documentary The Alien Autopsy Scandal, which I’d highly recommend to genre fans everywhere), there’s no denying the legacy of the Alien Autopsy video. However, I rarely see the tape discussed as what it truly is: a highly convincing found footage film directed by a passionate stage magician and brought to life by masterful practical effects work.
That’s why I’d like to invite readers to join me on a deep dive into one of the most infamous broadcasts of all time in an attempt to reevaluate the footage as a fascinating narrative experience rather than a complete hoax.
The TV Special That Convinced Millions It Was Real
Ray Santilli next to Extraterrestrial replica in ‘The Alien Autopsy Scandal’
For starters, regardless of whether or not you believe that there was in fact an extraterrestrial crash in Roswell during the summer of 1947 and that some form of autopsy was performed on the victims, the producers behind the black & white recordings, Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield, insist that their video was a “restoration.” Though I’d argue that the proper word is “remake”of genuine footage that was too damaged to air on television. That’s why the duo went on to recruit filmmaker and eccentric magician Spyros Melaris and sculptor/monster designer John Humphreys to bring their version of the autopsy to life and sell it to the highest bidder.
This is where the story of the Alien Autopsy as a narrative experience really begins. Melaris claims that his approach to the faux recording consisted of striving for extreme period accuracy in both shooting equipment and setting while also planting subtle details that would initially seem like mistakes but could later be revealed to actually fit the time period. That being said, the filmmaker was under the impression that the short would be released for free as a PR stunt, with the team later producing and selling an informative documentary chronicling exactly how the footage was faked and commenting on how easy it is to manipulate public perception with a good old-fashioned magic trick.
This obviously isn’t how things went down, and that’s likely the reason why Melaris has since distanced himself from everyone else involved with the project. Yet, no amount of behind-the-scenes drama can undermine the genuine effort that went into making the short as impressive as it is. From the sourcing of real animal organs from a local butcher to make the organic part of the creature more lifelike to the highly detailed sculpt that made use of a hollowed-out underlayer that could be filled with fake blood and assorted viscera, there’s a reason why so many Hollywood specialists are still impressed with the artistry on display here.
Of course, the believability is only half the story, as I think that the best part of the autopsy is how Melaris builds on the existing tension by obscuring certain details and often embracing the chaos of what a real examination of extraterrestrial life could feel like. The camera often goes out of focus at just the right time to make certain effects hit even harder, and we can only speculate as to what the hazmat-suited doctors are gesticulating about during the operation. There’s a real air of mystery to the whole thing that almost makes it feel like a cosmically terrifying, cursed film containing forbidden knowledge that civilians were never meant to see.
So when Fox’s Fact or Fiction brings in the specialists to comment on the film and its otherworldly subject, it’s no surprise that we end up with one of the most memorable mockumentaries of all time – albeit one where the participants are unaware that the footage they’re commenting on is basically a large-scale practical joke. A joke that the network was obviously in on, as many participants claim that the TV special cut out significant portions where guests point out that they believe the footage to be an elaborate hoax.
The Lasting Impact of the Hoax Turned Cultural Event
Regardless, I remember going to bed terrified after watching reruns of the special and thinking about the respected pathologist who claimed that the body was almost certainly inhuman, with even effects maestro Stan Winston commenting on how difficult it would be to recreate some of these visuals through practical puppetry. That’s not even mentioning Jonathan Frakes’ dramatic hyping up of the disturbing imagery as if he was talking about the tape from The Ring, with his spooky demeanor here likely being responsible for his later role as the host of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction a few years later.
Personally, I’d argue that the Alien Autopsy phenomenon had just as much of an impact on me as a horror fan as The Blair Witch Project, a film that was almost certainly influenced by the success of this immensely popular hoax (to the point where they even produced their own TV special commenting on Heather’s found footage). Even if Fox didn’t intend to produce a narrative feature about the aftermath of the Roswell crash, the end product still holds up remarkably well as a highly entertaining mockumentary exploring the idea that we may not be alone in the universe.
While neither Santilli nor the rest of the production team has ever commented on this, I also think it’s very likely that the idea of a faux Alien Autopsy could have been influenced by Dean Alioto’s The McPherson Tape/UFO Abduction. I’ve already written about how this granddaddy of found footage was co-opted by rogue ufologists who began selling bootlegs of the tape at conventions as if it were real evidence of a close encounter, so it’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that Santilli and company could have heard about this phenomenon and been inspired to come up with their own highly profitable hoax.
At the end of the day, it’s unlikely that the Alien Autopsy film is recreating any real footage from Roswell, but I can still appreciate the short and the accompanying television event as a standalone horror story that still influences the way we see found footage to this very day.
After all, the possibility that something could be real is often much scarier than finding out for sure – and that’s why I think Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction is still worth revisiting three decades down the line.
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