DJariya

This comes out on Peacock this Friday for those who still haven't seen it yet. Opinions on this are pretty divisive it seems.

OldBoy

On Peacock now. I didn’t like this too much.

GoldenJCJ

I actually didn’t hate this! It was perhaps a bit more straightforward than I would have liked but it was much better than Old, which was a straight-up piece of shit.

I’ve always appreciated Shyamalan’s directing - Say what you will about his movies but the guy is a masterful director of suspense - but his dialogue over his last few movies has gotten pretty annoying. I wonder if this was better because Shyamalan just adapted another author’s source material and didn’t write the entire thing from scratch.

Bautista was the best part of the movie and made me appreciate him more as an actor than I have before. I like that he’s actually choosing interesting projects and not just action-packed garbage.

bluetoast

He went from having the best amateur news footage in Signs to the worst with the tsunami in this one, which abandoned all semblance of being 'on the scene footage' and more like a cameraman placed at the precise vantage point, shooting and not making a sound as he gets engulfed in a wave.

Draven

I really enjoyed this. They kept you guessing until the end and I thought it played out pretty honestly in light of what was happening. I’m glad there wasn’t some fake-out twist too. One of his better efforts,‘for sure.

whotony

I liked it enough.

Was better then Old because the actors weren’t mostly terrible like they were in Old.

TheBang

Yeah, this is kinda how I feel too. It's like the entire movie is laid out in the first half hour, and it never deviates from that. They establish that the 4 of them can't hurt the family. One of them dies to unleash a plague, and so that's how it goes for the rest of them. Chekov's gun is "shown" (mentioned), and so you know it will be used later, and it is, pretty much as expected. The ending ends up being exactly what they say it is. The family member you expect to die based on hints in the first half hour is the one that does. As soon as they said they were there to prevent the apocalypse, I immediately suspected that they were the four horsemen. The only time there was any suspense in the movie for me was the shower curtain scene.

Yes, Leonard explained it exactly that way at the beginning. He said that each of their deaths would unleash a plague or whatever on the world that would kill hundreds of thousands, and it was meant to convince the family of what would happen (on a much larger scale) when the apocalypse arrived.

dsa_shea

Would humans really have a say in an apocalypse meant to wipe out humanity?

Troy Stiffler

God is such a little troll.

TheBang

Yeah, that aspect of it they didn't really explain. Why do they have a choice? Why does this particular sacrifice stave off the apocalypse?

They did mention that families had been making this choice for a long time or something like that. Does that mean that there have been multiple mass-casualty plagues happening over the years, and every time they do, it's because a family at some location is refusing to make a choice for the horsemen? And that every family has eventually made the choice, since the apocalypse hasn't happened yet?

Troy Stiffler

I think it’s pretty simple story of finding out if humanity is worthy of survival. It doesn’t have to be someone special. You’re over thinking it.

TheBang

Oh, I didn't mean that the family was special or something. They actually made that clear in the story that they weren't specifically selected, they were just the people that happened to be there. I meant more in terms of why does the sacrifice specifically have to be a family selecting one of their own and then killing them themselves? The horsemen were pretty specific in laying out those rules but without reason or how they got that info (in their visions, I assume). I don't necessarily need it explained, but it was just dropped into the plot with little more reasoning than "because". I tried to relate it to, say, God's sacrifice of his only son, Jesus Christ, to redeem the sins of man, but it didn't really seem to fit, and I couldn't think of anything else that would apply.

Is it meant to be a test of faith, like Abraham and Isaac? That might have actually made for a more interesting ending, if the sacrifice had been interrupted by divine intervention?

Is the book more interesting than the movie? Like I said above, it seems like the movie goes straightforward from Point A to Point B laid out in the first half hour, and never deviates.

GoldenJCJ

^ The closest the movie comes to explaining it is they say something to effect that this particular family was chosen because their love for one another was so pure.

I think they were just part of the vision the 4 people were having and fate placed them in the cabin at the right time.

It does sound like God is just a big dick though.

Draven

It struck me as similar to The Cabin in the Woods. This has been going on for a long time and we're just watching one example of how it plays out. So one could argue that something like 9/11 happened or a natural disaster on the other side of the world because those people in that group refused to pick.

TomOpus

Finally saw this after jumping on Peacock deal. Glad I waited.

I kinda felt the same way, especially the planes.

Finisher

I think that fire at the end would've been everywhere. And if they didn't make the sacrifice there would be no rain to put it out.

Whatever, M. Night is good at mindfuck thriller concepts but piss poor at fleshing them out. It's like "here's a cool concept now let me desperately try to stretch it out." Was obvious where this film was going. Still, cool concept like Old, just lacking a bit in execution. Dave Bautista killed it though.

Josh-da-man

Not a bad movie, but I had the twist --

One thing I did sort of wonder about is, if their deaths were unleashing these plagues (the earthquakes, the planes crashing, etc), what would happen if they refused to play along? Would the world just have ended by default or something?

Great casting with Bautista as Leonard. Physically intimidating, but soft-spoken and gentle. Really disquieting performance on his part.

davidh777

I thought this was fine. No, the family weren’t going to be hurt by the intruders, but I was still interested in how it would turn out. As has been mentioned, Bautista was very good, and the opening looked gorgeous.

In the bonus material (I rented the disc), Groff and Aldridge mentioned how they as gay actors appreciated being able to play gay characters, which is cool.

Yeah, I got that vibe too, and not just because of, y’know, the cabin aspect.

Cellar Door

This is on Amazon Prime now, BTW.

I liked it. Bautista was great, and the rest of the cast was good, too. A bit predictable in the end, but the journey was interesting.