This is behind the unusual ending

Knock at the Cabin is now in German cinemas. If you’re looking for explanations after The Sixth Sense director M. Night Shyamalan’s new horror film, this is it end explained. For everyone else: Warning, spoilers for the ending of Knock at the Cabin!

These questions are answered below:

1. What is the danger in Knock at the Cabin?

The basic idea of ​​Knock at the Cabin is established early on by M. Night Shyamalan: The couple Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge) vacation in a cabin in the woods with their adopted daughter Wen (Kristen Cui). However, the family idyll is disturbed by four strangers who break into the cabin and present Eric, Andrew and Wen with an impossible task: The family must choose one among themselves and then kill them themselves to prevent the apocalypse.

In the loving family network must therefore a person be sacrificed to save all mankind. The rules of the invaders are as follows: Suicide is not allowed. Every time Eric and company refuse to kill one of them, a new cataclysm descends upon the world and doom draws nearer. If they don’t make a decision, soon all the people on the planet will die and they will end up as the only survivors inhabiting an empty world.

How exactly is this supposed to work and which ones unknown power directing, the invaders do not explain (although there are many Christian religious references). You don’t even know why Eric’s family were chosen as saviors from the end of the world. But they claim that visions brought them here and that nothing can be done about it.

2. The Ending Explained: Is the Apocalypse Real in Knock at the Cabin?

The crucial question in Knock at the Cabin is: Are the four intruders mentally illbelong to a cult and have prepared all this in a perfidious way? Or tell the truth and the apocalypse is really imminent? The film keeps that in limbo for a long time. The individual stages of the end of the world are:

The first oncoming catastrophe of seaquakes with subsequent tsunamis can still be interpreted as coincidence or pre-programmed news broadcasts. Even the second calamity of the suddenly rising plague of the “X9 virus” had begun weeks earlier, as the logically arguing Andrew points out. At the latest when planes are falling from the sky not only on TV, but also over the forest and lightning is coming down from a dark cloud, it should be clear: The end of the world is really taking place.

When this can no longer be denied, Eric decides to let Andrew kill him. So that his family, according to a vision, have a future in an undamaged world. When Andrew and Wen return to civilization, they see at the diner that everything actually happened as shown on TV and the worst was just averted by Eric’s death became. You have saved countless people.

At the end, the radio plays the song “Boogie Shoes” by KC and the Sunshine Band. The songs in the car could already be heard on the way there and was sung by the whole family. Therefore, Andrew and Wen interpret this as a sign from the afterlife, from Eric.

3. Who are the four strangers in Knock at the Cabin?

The four strangers who invade the cabin introduce themselves as Leonard (Dave Bautista), Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Adriane (Abby Quinn) and Redmond (Rupert Grint). Hailing from different parts of the US, they met online and met for the first time on the day of the cabin visit. They were brought together by Visions that showed them doomwhereupon they made weapons according to their destiny and traveled to the “Savior Family”.

The unknowns stand for the four horsemen of the apocalypse a. So the biblical harbingers of the Last Judgment in the Revelation of John. Symbolically, the four often represent individual aspects of suffering such as war, hunger/scarcity, disease and death. In Knock at the Cabin, their number is also found in the four stages of the end of the world.

With their previous jobs and lives, the strangers tie in with the horrors of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Redmond (aka Rory O’Bannon) clarified as a person malicefor punching Andrew in a pub in his homophobic past. Leonard, on the other hand, was an elementary school teacher, Sabrina was a nurse, and Adriane was a mother. These are roles that come with “anti-apocalyptic” properties Orientation, healing and care accompanied.

Whenever the hostage family refuses their murder decision, the strangers kill themselves in order to delay the end of the world through their sacrifice. This gives them time to ask Andrew and Eric the victim question again and convince them of the truth of their claim.

4. Movie vs. Book: The ending of Knock at the Cabin deviates greatly from the original

Knock at the Cabin is based on the horror novel The Cabin at the End of the World, published in 2019 by author Paul Tremblay and published in Germany under the title Das Haus am Ende der Welt. But while both narratives are congruent at the beginning, the endings of the book and film differ drastically.

The differences begin after Andrew gets his gun out of the car: Andrew doesn’t shoot Sabrina in the film, he shoots Ariane. At the same time, in the novel, the young Wen shot in a scuffle. According to Leonard, since the girl’s death was not carried out voluntarily, the potential apocalypse is not averted: either Eric or Andrew must still die.

But Sabrina turns her back on her quest after Wen’s death, kills Leonard and offers to take Andrew and Eric to their car in the woods. Before Sabrina commits suicide there, she tells the couple that they can still avert the apocalypse. Eric then considers taking his own life, but Andrew argues that if there were a god who wasn’t satisfied with Wen’s death, he would refuse to obey that god. So In the end, Eric and Andrew both survive and escape – not knowing if the apocalypse is real or not. The novel readers experience a much more open ending than the film audience of Knock at the Cabin.

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