Knock at the Cabin’s original ending was much darker

M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the CabinIt fits perfectly in the movie’s pattern, including his recent alien-invasion thriller featuring a religious theme Signs. The heart of it all Signs grapples with religious faith and doubt, and what it means to experience a life-changing conviction that other people don’t share. Get in touch with the CabinThese ideas are channeled through an insane thriller about a home invasion. It pits four true believers against a family that sees them only as delusional, violent fanatics.

Much of the movie hangs on the kinds of big questions that have always dominated religious conversations: What’s true, what should we take on faith, and how should we live as a result? But like Shyamalan’s other films that touch on religion, faith, destiny, and supernatural intervention, Get in touch with the Cabin at least suggests that there’s some form of hope and catharsis in belief. It isn’t exactly an uplifting or optimistic movie, but it’s a fairly spiritual one, suggesting that while belief and doubt naturally go hand-in-hand, it’s better to have faith than surrender to cynicism.

All of which is radically different from Paul Tremblay’s 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the WorldShyamalan and Michael Sherman, the screenwriters, adapted it for the film. That book has a much darker ending — and a radically different message.

[Ed. note: End spoilers ahead for Knock at the Cabin and The Cabin at the End of the World.]

What is Knock at the Cabin like?

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About the first half Get in touch with the CabinYou can adapt The Cabin at the End of the World in almost line-for-line detail, with much of the dialogue transcribed directly from Tremblay’s book. Even the casting seems heavily inspired by Tremblay’s description of the characters.

Eric and Andrew, a young couple (Jonathan Groff).Fleabag’s Ben Aldridge) are vacationing at a remote, rustic rental cabin with their adopted daughter, Wen (Kristen Cui), when a muscular, intimidating stranger, Leonard (Dave Bautista), approaches Wen and gently befriends her. He’s the first of four strangers who have come to the cabin to hold Wen and her fathers hostage and present them with a choice: One of them must voluntarily sacrifice themselves to prevent the apocalypse.

Leonard and the other three invaders — Redmond (longtime Harry Potter movie stalwart Rupert Grint), Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), and Ardiane (Abby Quinn) — have all experienced visions of the impending disasters that they believe will destroy the planet if Eric, Andrew, and Wen refuse to make their sacrifice. The four outsiders lay out their backstories: They’re all ordinary people who seem to have been chosen as heralds by some unknown force. They’re all horrified by what they’ve seen and experienced, and while none of them want to terrorize Wen and her dads, they understand how unbelievable their message is. The first half of the movie is largely back-and-forth between the two groups, as Leonard’s team tries to convince the family that the threat is real, and Eric and Andrew do their best to debunk it and get the invaders to see reason.

Eric and Andrew in both cases refuse to accept the apocalyptic tale or commit suicide together. The invaders are carrying strange weapons made from common tools, such as a pitchfork and a number of rocking pizza cutters. They ritually murder Redmond who surrenders to them, fearfully, but passively. Leonard claims that Redmond’s death has set off a new stage of the end-of-the world events and shows Eric an Andrew TV news reports. They dismiss it as a coincidence. Eventually, they break free and wrestle with their remaining captors, with Andrew running to their car to get the gun he’s brought for self-defense.

The stories diverge dramatically from one another. Invaders execute Ardiane ritualistically, which launches another apocalyptic episode, just before Eric escapes. Andrew returns with his gun to the cabin, where he kills Sabrina. After confronting Leonard, the men send Wen into hiding in a nearby treehouse. Leonard manages to get the gun back from them, but cuts his throat. He tells the two men that they only have one chance to sacrifice their lives and save the planet. Eric, who’s been experiencing visions of his own and has slowly come to believe Leonard is telling the truth, insists that he should be the sacrifice.

As planes plummet to Earth, the sky turns dark, and lightning strikes all around them, Eric lays out a vision of Wen’s future and says he’s willing to sacrifice himself to bring about a world that won’t exist otherwise. He presses Andrew’s gun to his chest, and one of them pulls the trigger. Eric passes away, then the lightning suddenly stops. Andrew joins Wen, then returns to his hometown.

The disasters start to reverse themselves, and it appears that the apocalypse has been avoided. In the end, as they mourn together, a song comes on the radio that they’d all previously shared as a family sing-along. Viewers are left to interpret that moment for themselves — whether it’s meant as a sign or a coincidence, a bit of comforting grace from whatever force put them through this gauntlet, or a touch of contact from beyond the grave.

Is there a way to end The Cabin At the End of the World’s?

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This is the book version. In Tremblay’s version, Eric and Andrew break free the morning after Redmond’s execution. Andrew grabs the gun from the back and takes the three remaining invaders hostage. But Ardiane attacked him and she is shot to death. Leonard attempts to restrain him, and the gun goes off — and kills Wen.

Everything about the story changes dramatically from that point. Sabrina, gripped by doubt and fury over what she’s done, switches sides and helps Eric and Andrew tie up Leonard, who she executes with one of the invaders’ weapons. She soon realizes that she is being controlled by something, which makes her act in ways that are completely out of her control. Her companions also experienced this.

Sabrina tells the two men that because Wen’s death was an accident, it “doesn’t count” for the purposes of supernatural sacrifice — she can still feel the apocalypse coming. Eric and Andrew have separate breakdowns, but reluctantly follow Sabrina to dig up the keys to the invaders’ truck, which she finds along with a hidden gun. She tells them they must choose who dies and she then fatally shoots her own will.

In the end, Eric — far more clearly a religious believer in the book than in the movie — wants to kill himself in case what they’ve been told is true, but Andrew prevents him, and takes the gun away. Together, the two men decide neither of them will die, and that they’ll navigate the coming apocalypse together, even if everyone else in the world dies as a result. They decide to continue on the road with their daughter’s body, even though a possible supernatural storm is raging around them.

How does Knock at the Cabin end?

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While Andrew clearly still has doubts in the movie version, and the story still leaves philosophical questions behind — why does the world require an innocent sacrifice to prevent its destruction, and who sent the visions to Leonard and his group? — Shyamalan and his co-writers give the characters some sense of grace and catharsis. It’s fairly clear that Eric did save the world by dying, that the invaders were in contact with some higher power, and that their visions were true. Although there may be some predatory and malign order in this universe, at least it is order.

That fits with Shyamalan’s previous movies about the supernatural, where characters may doubt and debate their visions or compulsions, but there always seems to be an ineffable plan at work, one they just can’t see with their limited understanding. Graham is the main character in Signs, has lost his faith, but by the end of the story, he sees God’s intervening hand in his son’s asthma and his daughter’s habit of leaving glasses of water all over the house. Malcolm Sixth Sense believes his young patient Cole, who claims he can communicate with the dead, is delusional — but by the end of the film, it’s become clear that Cole has been given a supernatural gift that he’s using to avenge the helpless and save people who seem past salvation.

Shyamalan’s sense of an orderly world where things fall together according to a higher power sometimes comes in the form of traditional fantasy: In Lady in the waterCleveland Heep, the protagonist of the story must accept that he is part in an absurdly stylized tale in order to save his future. In this movie, destiny and symbolism prevail over divine intervention. But Lady in the water’s universe once again is arranged around a specific order, and the sense that everyone has a duty to accept their arbitrarily assigned place in it. Like with Get in touch with the Cabin, the characters aren’t permitted to question who designed the mysterious system that’s demanding things of them — they just all have a set part to play to prevent disaster.

The Cabin at the End of the WorldThat sense of a greater plan is lost and the higher power that governs it is cast to the wind. Everyone wants to help the main character of this story, but he dies suddenly in an unexpected accident. There’s a sense in both book and movie that all the characters are fundamentally innocent, forced to do things they don’t want to do by forces they don’t understand. It’s a rich metaphor to explore and debate. Wen, a 8-year old sweetie who wants everybody to be kind, is especially innocent. Her arbitrary, unneeded death seems like an extremely cruel twist.

Add on the fact that her death doesn’t even serve a purpose, and it seems even crueler. In Shyamalan’s version of this world, seemingly good people are forced into terrible choices, but those choices ultimately appear to have meaning. Sabrina’s fate in the book makes it clear that choices are ultimately meaningless, once Tremblay’s mysterious and possibly malign higher power is involved. Sabrina doesn’t choose to kill Leonard, or herself — both things are forced on her. The invaders make it clear that they didn’t even choose to believe their visions and come to the cabin — they just found themselves en route to the site against their wills.

And the one choice that does seem to matter — Eric and Andrew both deciding to let the apocalypse happen — feels like a particularly cynical one. In the depths of their grief and frustration, it seems believable enough: They’re both ready to let the rest of the world go hang, as long as they don’t have to be separated. It’s a selfish choice, but one made consciously out of a feeling that a world that would take Wen away from them so senselessly isn’t a world worth saving.

But it’s still tragic, and consciously grotesque, for them to shut out everyone else in the world and choose their mourning over any other kind of future. Shyamalan’s version at least has some faith in humanity, and in ordinary people having the strength to put other people’s needs ahead of their own.

Eric gets to enjoy the movie and it gives him something to die for. Get in touch with the CabinThis is a sad, terrible movie that contains many tragic scenes and makes for some very difficult decisions. But it’s a much more optimistic and hopeful vision of the world than the book it was based on. Which doesn’t make either version better than the other. It’s just a further reminder of Shyamalan’s specific tastes: He enjoys watching his characters navigate questions about belief and their sense of purpose, but ultimately, he’s an idealist who’d rather not see his worlds burn.