In this section of our Colossus Movie Guide for Knock at the Cabin, we will explain the film’s ending.
Cast
- Dave Bautista – Leonard
- Jonathan Groff – Eric
- Ben Aldridge – Andrew
- Nikki Amuka-Bird – Sabrina
- Kristen Cui – Wen
- Abby Quinn – Adriane
- Rupert Grint – Redmond
- M. Night Shyamalan – Writer, director, infomercial host
The end of Knock at the Cabin explained
Recap
After Andrew shoots Sabrina, Leonard then sacrifices her with his weapon. The apocalypse now appears imminent, as airplanes continue to fall from the sky. Leonard then takes Eric, Andrew, and Wen out onto the back deck where he will sacrifice himself. Eric and Andrew ask Wen to run and hide in the treehouse. Leonard says that once he’s dead, Eric and Andrew will still have a few minutes left to sacrifice themselves before the apocalypse takes hold. Leonard then takes his own life.
After Leonard’s death, more airplanes crash, lightning bolts strike trees, and the sky ominously darkens. At this point, both Eric and Andrew are convinced the apocalypse is happening—but Andrew is still hesitant to make a sacrifice. He can’t fathom a world where he, Eric, and Wen aren’t all together. However, Eric seems more determined. He believes that Leonard, Sabrina, Adriane, and Redmond represented the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: malice (Redmond), nurture (Adriane), healing (Sabrina), guidance (Leonard). And that the fate of the world depends upon Andrew sacrificing Eric.
Now on Eric’s side, Andrew instead offers himself as a sacrifice. But then Eric reveals what he saw in the figure of light when Redmond died: he saw the future, where Andrew had grown old, where their daughter was happy and healthy and tenacious. Eric asks Andrew to be strong and trust in his vision. Eric repeats their mantra, “always together,” and Andrew shoots him.
After weeping over Eric’s body, Andrew climbs into the treehouse to comfort Wen. They hold each other for a while, then walk to find the Four Horsemen’s truck. They drive to a local diner where everybody is watching the news. It appears as though the apocalypse has ended, that order is being restored to the world.
After a bit of time, Wen and Andrew reenter the truck and sit in silence. When Andrew turns on the car, “Boogie Shoes” by KC and the Sunshine Band is playing—the same song that the three of them sang as they drove up to the cabin. Andrew turns off the radio. Then Wen turns it back on, only to turn it back off after looking at her father’s depressed face. Then Andrew turns the music back on. He and Wen share a solemn silence before driving off into the world.
Meaning
In order to fully understand the ending of Knock at the Cabin, we need to comprehend the emotional stakes at hand. That means viewing the entire film as a defamiliarization of mental anxiety, of existential dread. Eric and Andrew face much discrimination in the world as same-sex parents. And Andrew in particular is having trouble existing in a reality where he and his loved ones face intolerance, where their future seems uncertain—this base layer becomes the allegorical framework for the entire film.
The plot is simple enough: Leonard, Sabrina, Adriane, and Redmond have visions of the world ending, and the only way to stop it is to convince Eric and Andrew to sacrifice either themselves or their daughter in order to stop the apocalypse. Accepting that fate and carrying out such an impossible decision is incredibly difficult. Even sacrificing a total stranger would be hard. But to sacrifice your life partner? Or your daughter? The weight of such a decision would send someone into a psychological crisis.
This entire situation extends from Andrew’s trauma. As a human rights lawyer, Andrew faces and fights discrimination on a daily basis on behalf of others. It’s clear that fighting for equality and justice had always been his mission, that he was emboldened to improve the world for people like he and Andrew. But after Andrew was attacked by Redmond at a bar, it seems Andrew’s anxiety started to build—the physicality of the experience was too brutal and too overwhelming to overcome. He had to attend years of therapy to dealt with emotional angst.
Despite the therapy, the anxiety carried with Andrew and the traumatic experience continued haunt his reality for years. Moving forward, he was forced to hide his relationship with Eric (like when he pretends Eric is his brother when picking up Wen as a baby) and was shamed for his way of life (like when Andrew’s father sits in silence at the dinner table). It’s clear that whatever fiery passion Andrew had before the meeting with Redmond had been subdued, and that the cruelties of the world had repeatedly beat him into submission. Despite his job and whatever front he puts on, Andrew had trouble dealing with the state of the world and how unfair it was to him and his family.
The cabin then becomes a symbol for his desire to run from uncertainty. Located deep in the woods away from civilization, Andrew can hide away from the world and all its problems. But eventually…the world will come knocking. And you can refuse entry all you want, but eventually reality will break its way in and force you to deal with your anxieties.
This isn’t a problem unique to Andrew. Dare I say, this problem affects us all at one time or another—and affects many people much more deeply than others. We can view Andrew’s particular experience as something called “intolerance of uncertainty.” As this article from The Conversation notes, “while it is quite natural to experience uncertainty as uncomfortable, for some it is seemingly unbearable.” The idea of “not knowing” is simply part of reality. Uncertainty constantly plagues us—uncertainty about the world and our place in the world. We have a predisposition to control our own narrative, to dictate our paths in life. But inevitably, the world rears its ugly head and shakes us back to reality: sometimes, we have no control over our surroundings.
This has been an issue in cognitive therapy for years, and has only grown more complicated and rampant as climate change looms over the livability of our planet, as discrimination and hate continues to disenfranchise entire populations of people, as mental anxiety increasingly becomes more problematic. And it’s clear that Andrew traumatized by his experience with Redmond. After years of fighting for change and trying to control the narrative, he was awakened to the cruelties of the world in one barbaric moment.
So what happens to people who suffer from intolerance of uncertainty? A crucial step is attending therapy, which Andrew has done. But clearly the trauma persisted. Clearly he continued to dread the state of the world and his family’s place within it. And eventually, the totality of his situation reached a breaking point that became the framework for the plot of Knock at the Cabin. Everything that happens in the movie and everyone in the cabin represent facets of his injured psyche.
At face value, the Four Horsemen represent the overwhelming fear that you’ll never escape the apocalypse, that your doom is imminent. Andrew continues and continues to deny the situation, to explain everything away as coincidence. But all the signs are there: Redmond is back from the traumatic experience to remind him of the fact that, no matter how hard you fight, people can still hurt you; Eric injures his head in the exact same spot as Andrew on the night of the attack; the apocalypse is threatening to leave him and his family to wander alone on an empty planet—an illustration of how he feels about their situation already. The more and more he fights, the closer the world draws to an end. And the only way to stop everything is to confront reality.
While one of the horsemen represents something negative, the other three horsemen provide a path to contentment. Redmond represents the malice of the world, or the malice that can brew in somebody who has been wronged—as Andrew was when Redmond attacked him. But then Adriane represents the nurturing nature he can channel to raise Wen properly, to help others in the world who face adversity; Sabrina represents the healing nature he must channel when Eric is hurt, when he needs to protect those he loves; and Leonard represents the guidance he must provide for himself as he continues to fight.
This introduces the remedy to intolerance of uncertainty. While you can’t control each and every little thing that happens to you in life, you can learn to weather such uncertainty. The world and society be too vast and too capricious to restrain, but every change represents an opportunity for us to react positively and grow. It can certainly feel like the world is ending when something bad happens…but it won’t. Time will continue to tick and society will continue to evolve. And we have the power to decide how we’ll fit into the world’s grand narrative.
Figuring that out isn’t easy. That’s why it’s good to have people in our corner—and that’s what Eric and Wen represent to Andrew. In a concussed moment, Eric fatefully has a vision in the moment where Redmond—the man who gave Andrew the same injury years earlier—is sacrificed. Andrew’s trauma becomes the foundation for the vision, in which Eric witnesses Andrew growing old and raising their daughter to be an upstanding, joyous, confident woman. Eric may be uncertain about the future, but Eric sees it so confidently, so surely. He knows that Andrew will find peace after sacrificing Eric, will manifest the strength and courage to overcome his trauma and move forward and change the world for the better.
Which brings us to that final scene. Andrew can’t stand to hear “Boogie Shoes” as it reminds him of losing Eric. Wen’s childish instinct is to turn the radio back on. She doesn’t realize how affecting the moment will be for Andrew—and perhaps she doesn’t realize how difficult it will be for herself to hear it. But after a pause, Andrew turns the radio back on. It’s a symbol that he’s ready to become part of the world once again, that he’s ready to serve as a model for Wen. It’s a choice to focus on the positive rather than the negative. Eric may be gone, but—as they repeated to each other throughout the film—they will be “always together.” Eric helped Andrew find emotional catharsis during the most difficult moment of his life, in a moment where the world was ending and the future seemed hopeless. In the face of such destruction, Andrew was able to overcome. He confronted the most heart-wrenching choice he’ll ever have to make, which—despite the pain and discomfort that comes with learning to navigate the intolerance of uncertainty—allowed him to become human again.
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