M. Night Shyamalan explains why the ending of ‘Knock at the Cabin’ is different from the book

Knock at the Cabin is knocking at our doorsteps, with the latest nightmare from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan set to join the filmmaker’s topsy-turvy filmography in a matter of days. Whether it will go the way of the rousing, beautiful The Sixth Sense or the creatively-void, barely-watchable Old remains to be seen, but the world could always use more good movies, so we’re hoping Shyamalan can bring this one home.

The film has a unique distinction as being the first Shyamalan feature to be adapted from pre-existing material, with the filmmaker having Paul G. Tremblay’s 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World to thank for his latest screenplay. But, it wouldn’t be a Shyamalan film without one of his trademark twist endings, and we weren’t foolish enough to believe it would be a page-for-page adaptation in the first place, anyway.

If you’re familiar with the ending of the novel, then you’ll probably understand why Shyamalan decided to go down a different route; even the mind behind The Sixth Sense has limits on how dark he’ll let his materials go. Speaking to Digital Spy, Shyamalan divulged his reasons for changing the ending for the film adaptation, noting how the story as a whole was simply too delectable to not be told on-screen, even if the ending would need some tinkering to feel more appropriate.

“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 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.’”

The film follows a family of three, fathers Eric and Andrew and their adopted young daughter Wen, as they find themselves retreating to a cabin for what they hope to be a relaxing family vacation. Their getaway falls apart in the blink of an eye when four strangers break into their cabin, holding the family hostage and demanding that they offer one of them as a sacrifice in order to prevent the apocalypse.

Knock at the Cabin will release to theaters on Feb. 3.