Movies like Knock at the Cabin

Why it's similar — Destry Allyn Spielberg's debut works the same closed-quarters moral-thriller register as Shyamalan: a small group of children trapped with a charismatic adult whose stated ethical framework is the entire problem, and a script that refuses the genre's standard escape valves. Both films are arguments for sitting inside an uncomfortable ethical scenario rather than cutting to the rescue.

Why it's similar — Jaume Collet-Serra's Esther is the film Knock at the Cabin's home-invasion-by-conviction structure is closest to: a stranger arrives in the family home with a story she absolutely believes, and the parents have to decide which of the two adults in front of them is the one their child should not be alone with. Both films make the kitchen and the upstairs bedroom into a moral courtroom.

Why it's similar — Brian De Palma's adaptation of Stephen King is the foundational text Knock at the Cabin is still in conversation with: religious-apocalyptic vocabulary forced into a domestic American interior, with a parent figure whose absolute conviction the film refuses to laugh off. Carrie's mother and Knock's four strangers are arguing from the same shelf of texts; the films just disagree about who is on the floor at the end.

Why it's similar — Lee Daniels's Pittsburgh-set possession-and-faith drama is the film Knock most directly rhymes with for viewers who liked Shyamalan's willingness to let the religious vocabulary be the religious vocabulary. Both films treat a small American household as the actual location of a cosmic argument that the wider world keeps refusing to admit is happening.

Why it's similar — James Wan's Insidious is the early-2010s Blumhouse companion piece: a family inside their own house being asked, by a polite outside party, to accept a metaphysical framework most of the parents in the room would rather not hear about. The films share their structural pleasure — the wait for the next ring of the doorbell — and their willingness to let the supernatural be matter-of-fact about its schedule.