While not the first time it's happened, M. Night Shyamalan reveals that Knock at the Cabin nearly didn't include a major tradition of his. Based on Paul G. Tremblay's novel, the psychological horror film centers on a family of three heading to a remote cabin for a weekend getaway finding themselves under threat by a group of four strangers who claim to be on a mission to stop the apocalypse, which requires one of the family to sacrifice themselves. Dave Bautista leads the cast of Knock at the Cabin alongside Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Kristen Cui, Abby Quinn and Rupert Grint.
In a recent interview with Collider to discuss his newly released film, M. Night Shyamalan opened up about the making of Knock at the Cabin. When asked about his cameo in the film, the writer/director revealed it nearly didn't come to be, explaining how his editor argued to keep the Shyamalan tradition. See what Shyamalan shared below:
Sometimes I'm not in the films because I just can't, it doesn't seem right. And this one I thought, for sure, I'm not going to be in. That's what I thought for sure. And then in pre-production, I was like, "You know what? I have a funny idea." And then everybody enjoyed the concept so much. I was like, "All right, let's go shoot." It was the first thing we shot, this thing that's in Knock at the Cabin. And I was like, "This is never going to end up in the movie." And it did. And the editor was like, "I love it. It's so funny." And I was like, "You sure?"
Shyamalan's History Of Cameos Explained
With Knock at the Cabin, Shyamalan marks his fifteenth feature film behind the camera, but also his twelfth time in front of the camera for one of his own projects. Going all the way back to his directorial debut Praying With Anger, Shyamalan has appeared in nearly all of his films, with a variety of importance to the various stories. The Sixth Sense not only marked his first major movie, but also his first proper cameo, appearing as the physician Toni Collette's Lynn takes Haley Joel Osment's Cole to see about his wounds and "nightmares."
Shyamalan would keep this tradition going with his next film, Unbreakable, appearing as a drug dealer at the football stadium visited in the film, which he would later retcon to be a security guard named Jai seen in Split and Glass. The writer/director would give himself a somewhat bigger role in his subsequent film, Signs, as a local veterinarian responsible for the death of Mel Gibson's wife prior to the start of the movie who also successfully traps an alien in his home. His biggest role would come in 2006's Lady in the Water in which we would play Vick Ran, a tenant working on a novel called The Cookbook who is revealed to be a prophet able to translate the messages from Bryce Dallas Howard's Story.
After minor appearances in The Happening and The Last Airbender, Shyamalan would ramp down his cameo tradition with 2013's After Earth and his 2015 comeback movie, The Visit. Having brought his Eastrail 177 Trilogy to a close with Glass, he would again cameo in Old as the hotel bus driver transporting guests to the malevolent secluded beach while monitoring their rapid aging processes. Fans of the filmmaker and his sneaky cameos can head to theaters to catch his latest on-screen appearance with Knock at the Cabin now out.
Source: Collider