The bad religion of KNOCK AT THE CABIN and WOMEN TALKING

Two recent releases prompt some spiritual reflection.

I don’t write about film from a spiritual perspective too much anymore, a reality that would have shocked me just a few years ago. There was a period in which that was my specialty. I spent several years writing about film and pop culture for Patheos, a website dedicated to discussions about faith. The long-form pieces I’m proudest of – including thoughts on The Last Temptation of Christ; The Shawshank Redemption and The Mist; and Planes, Trains and Automobiles – were for publications centered around the intersection of Christianity and popular culture. Heck, I spent several years co-hosting a culture podcast with the lead singer of a Christian ska band. 

I’d actually like to get back to that a little bit. There should be a bit of memoir to these posts, and my faith is important to me. So, I’m going to begin including a bit more of my faith perspective on things when appropriate. This isn’t going to turn into a faith-and-culture newsletter; I’m not going to begin focusing on faith-based movies. If you’re not interested in faith conversations, that’s totally okay. There will still be plenty of just plain-ol’ movie talk to keep us busy. This will just be a new flavor I toss in from time to time. 

Such as this week, when two very different movies caused me to reflect a lot about the faith culture I grew up in, and not always in ways that made me proud.

Women Deconstructing

I’m not going to review Women Talking . I’ve already done that at CinemaNerdz, and Perry and I spent about an hour talking about it for an upcoming episode of We’re Watching Here. If you know me, you know I’m a big fan of director Sarah Polley and of this film; it was #4 on my list of the top 10 films of 2022. 

But I wanted to expound a bit on something I noted in my review about how this film feels, at times, like a refutation of the Apostle Paul’s writing about women in the church and how its interpretation over the centuries has led to so much damage. 

There’s a lot to love about Polley’s film, and I talk more about it in my review and in our upcoming podcast episode. But one thing I deeply appreciate is that Polley doesn’t make this an anti-faith screed. It would be very easy and understandable to make this a movie where the women’s decision is to just abandon their faith, especially as they wrestle with repeated commands to forgive their abusers and move on with their lives (shades, sadly, of real-life current events). For these women, abandoning their faith is not an option – to do so would be to lose their hope of heaven. It’s unthinkable. 

Rather, the film is a look at conversations of deconstruction and spiritual re-evaluation. The women compare their abuse with the claims of a good God and believe that the only way to honor and obey that God would be to cut their ties with the people perverting the faith. They discuss the concept of forgiveness and whether forced forgiveness can be honest and God-honoring anyway. They examine whether it would be more right to fight or to leave, and whether God might be waiting for them in another town, able to provide them a new start. The film, like the novel on which it is based, bills itself as a “work of female imagination,” but it’s also a work of theological imagination, as the women consider the possibility not of leaving their faith but of renewing and revitalizing it, returning it to the pure thing it once was. 

In no way can I compare my own faith struggles with what these characters have endured. But the way that Polley frames and writes these discussions, I was reminded of my own process of turning over my faith and re-examining it in recent years, beginning with the 2016 election. It was during this time that I began to notice that the same people who had taught me that character matters and that we’re called to respect the image of God in others were beginning to showcase the opposite of that through their racism, homophobia and cruelty. It wasn’t just that God was good and they were sinners – our faith tells us that is the reality for all of us. But rather, I’d been raised to believe that following Jesus would transform a person into someone consistently modeling love, joy, faith, peace, patience, kindness, goodness and self-control – traits I saw atrophying throughout the faith communities I’d grown up in. I went back and forth trying to understand whether this meant I should fight back or simply leave the faith entirely. Instead, I came to a point where I realized that I love the message and person of Jesus and that my passion should be to live it out and find communities doing the same. Like the characters, I wanted to return our faith to the pure thing and break ties with those twisting it into something unrecognizable. 

These conversations are so crucial to engage in with ourselves and our community. I know deconstruction is kind of a dirty word in some of Christian culture, and I’ll admit I don’t know that I particularly like it myself. But I think regular periods of spiritual re-evaluation are necessary – I’ve heard other people refer to it as auditing – in order to keep faith from stagnating. It’s even more necessary in times when we witness our community acting in ways that are inconsistent with those beliefs, especially on a systemic basis – I’ve said before that if your faith community isn’t consistently evidencing the fruit of the Spirit, you need to find a new faith community. It’s hard to do, but it’s crucial, and it’s helpful if we can do it in community, where others may help us understand truths that we can’t see on our own. 

That’s the most powerful part of Women Talking, for me. It’s about conversations in which we can see these characters, many for the first time, getting a glimpse at new possibilities and truths, understanding their identity and dignity, imagining a life that they weren’t even sure they had a right to. Far from a slog, it’s a lively and often funny, warm-hearted movie, filled with many of last year’s best performances (the fact that none of the actors was nominated is both a travesty but also a testament to how strong of an ensemble piece this is). It’s a great film in its own right, and the fact that it got me musing about matters of the soul only makes it better. 

Women Talking is now in theaters. 

A ‘Knock’ against extremism 

This is likely the only time a Sarah Polley movie and an M. Night Shyamalan one will show up in the same discussion. 

Again, I’m not going to review Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin, as you can read my thoughts on it over at CinemaNerdz as well. Long story short: I tend to root for Shyamalan, and I think this film – based on a Paul Tremblay novel I quite liked – is compelling and suspenseful through most of its runtime before it falls apart in its final 15 minutes. It’s an effective little scary movie. But what really unsettled me is how it showcased a side of me that I’m embarrassed ever existed and reveals a lot of the toxicity I carried growing up – and the changes Shyamalan makes to Tremblay’s ending tend to undercut all of that. 

Spoilers for Knock at the Cabin follow

If you’re not aware of the plot of Knock at the Cabin, I’ll briefly give an overview. A gay couple and their adopted child are on vacation at an isolated cabin when they’re accosted by four weapon-wielding strangers. They come bearing a message: the apocalypse is drawing nigh and the only way for the end of humanity to be averted is for the family to pick one of their own to sacrifice. Destroy the family unit for the ultimate well-being of mankind. 

It’s worth noting here that the strangers aren’t vicious. In fact, they’re often apologetic and almost awkwardly polite; even Rupert Grint’s uncouth redneck – portrayed more viciously in the book – seems to be trying to prove he’s reformed. Their politeness, particularly the gentleness shown by their leader (Dave Baustista), is almost more unnerving than any overt menace would be. It underscores their conviction, the belief that they are dead-set on drastically hurting this family for the greater good. 

It sounds weird to say this, but I saw my old self in these characters. 

I didn’t grow up in a doomsday cult, although the brand of fundamentalist Baptist I grew up in did subscribe to the bonkers theories espoused in the Left Behind books. We believed in Heaven and Hell – concepts I still sometimes struggle to reconcile my views on – and we strongly believed it was our job to tell other people they were headed in one direction or another. And mostly, that just meant telling people Hell was comin’ and they had to be ready to repent. 

That’s not actually rare. Evangelicalism, in which I grew up and am still technically a part of, is predicated on believing we have a responsibility to tell others about Jesus. And that’s something I love to do; I’ve been blessed to know Jesus, and following Him has brought me peace. I love to tell people about my faith, and use it as a source of encouragement and hope, while also being clear about the perversions of it that abound. There’s nothing wrong with being evangelical about your faith – we should expect nothing less from the things that give us meaning and that we orient our lives around, right? 

But there’s a big difference in sharing the peace you’ve found and using it as a cudgel to manipulate, coerce or change people – even if you’re doing so under the guise of kindness. Too often, Christians treat people who don’t subscribe to their beliefs as targets or sales marks. We expect them to be ready to change their lives and make major sacrifices because we’ve presented them with what we frame as an unbelievable – indeed, soul-changing – offer. I know this, because I was once literally trained to do this. In high school, I spent a week at an evangelism boot camp of sorts in Chicago, where I was then turned on the streets to accost strangers and sell Jesus to them. I was not great at it.

And there’s been no bigger target for evangelicals in recent years than the gay community. 

I’m not going to dive into the whole debate over Christian theology and homosexuality. It should surprise no one to know that there are many Christians who are not affirming of same-sex relationships. There are also many Christians who are. For reasons I’ve laid out elsewhere, I lean toward affirming, both because I don’t believe that the traditional readings of the passages regarding homosexuality have been interpreted correctly and, more importantly, because I have failed to consistently see those beliefs lived out in a way that is marked by love, compassion and kindness – the true marks we should expect of Christ-followers. I love the gay community, and I believe they should be welcome and active in our churches.

I grew up, however, in communities that were most decidedly non-affirming. 

There are usually two ways this is evidenced. One is the outright hostility that we often see. It doesn’t have to be the overt hatred of the Westboro cult. But growing up, it was common for families I knew to disown their gay family members or, at the very least, refuse to acknowledge their relationships. There was blunt talk from the pulpit about how those who were in same-sex relationships were in open disobedience to God (oddly, I never heard mention about the many, many divorced members who were living in disobedience to God in our congregations and on leadership, even though Jesus set exact parameters for what was approved in that situation, and never mentioned homosexuality once). There was the accepted belief that if you were a Christian, you didn’t associate with the gay community except to tell them to repent or go to hell. 

But there’s also a feigned kindness that can be even more insidious. It’s the kind that tells our gay acquaintances and friends that we love them even if we don’t approve of their lifestyle; but because relationships and sexuality are such intimate and important parts of who we are, it actually means the friendship just dies because we can’t accept a core part of their identity. It means saying “love the sinner, hate the sin,” a phrase that's insidious because it ensures that we view others through an eye of judgment and pity while calling it love. It leads to the tone deafness of telling someone we have “good news” that will change their life – while we demand that they cut out core parts of their identity and end their closest relationships. Many Christians will think nothing of inviting a gay friend to church to “join the family,” and then not see the irony in asking that same friend to break up with their partner or divorce their spouse in order to do so. 

And that, in an extreme example, is what the antagonists of Knock at the Cabin are doing (not for nothing are they first misidentified as Jehovah’s Witnesses). They understand that they’re asking the two men to do something that is an almost impossible decision. But they seem frustrated and vexed when the two don’t immediately agree; they don’t realize that what they present as a noble sacrifice in order to be a savior of humanity is destroying a family unit, literally asking them to kill an essential part of that family – and, for anyone who’s lost someone, you know that also means killing a part of yourself – for strangers at the behest of God. It sets up an impossible choice – or does it? 

Why would you sacrifice yourself for people who terrorize and menace you? Why would you kill your partner for a world that’s proven time and again it hates you? And what kind of god would require the death of one person in order to save all mankind? Spoiler alert: A pretty crappy one*. 

* It’s worth noting that the god in this movie is not presumed to be a Christian god and that the Christian faith actually agrees that the fate of humanity can’t hinge on one person; it teaches that God presented himself as a sacrifice. I didn’t watch Knock at the Cabin and walk away with my thoughts on my core faith changed, but it did provide a new perspective on some of the views and practices to which I used to subscribe and practice. 

Tremblay’s novel agrees with me – and again, I must warn you that there will be spoilers for both the endings of the novel and the film from here on out. In the end of his book Cabin at the End of the World, the two men face unimaginable loss – their 7-year-old daughter is shot and killed in the struggle to escape. The bad guys all die. There’s a lot that’s left ambiguous – was one of the antagonists the same guy who attacked one of the men at a bar years back? Is the apocalypse really happening, or is it just a combination of a really bad day, some coincidences and manipulation, and bad weather? The men decide they’ve suffered enough; apocalypse or not, they’re going to stay together, come what may. The story ends with them moving into a future that might or might not be falling apart. It’s bleak and a bit nihilistic, but it feels organic to the story being told. 

Shyamalan’s ending is…well, it’s a Shyamalan ending. The movie follows the book’s story up to a point, except that the child lives (which is the right move – no mainstream movie would end with the death of a kid). The intruders die. The couple escapes. Except that Shyamalan then overtly hammers home the fact that the apocalypse is actually occurring; he spells out what was suggested in the novel: that the intruders were the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. And now, the fate of the world does rest on this family. Either they agree to sacrifice one of their own or humanity is done for. 

Had Shyamalan ended here, it might be an all-timer of a reveal that left the protagonists with an impossible, awful choice and let the audience sit in it, refusing closure and leaving them deeply unsettled – things a horror movie should often do. Instead, the men understand what’s going on and talk through the questions above about whether humanity deserves their sacrifice. In the end, one man kills the other before getting into a car and driving away with his daughter, and we receive hints that the disaster may be abating. 

It’s a crap ending, artistically. Much of the movie’s effectiveness in its first 90 minutes comes from the way Shyamalan dances between what’s real and what’s imagined. Is the more religious husband inclined to believe the attackers, especially when his thinking is compromised by a concussion? It’s hinted that while the intruders may seem sincere in their beliefs and mission, they could also be manipulating the family, tormenting them just for kicks. An ending that refused to give us an answer could be an effective and shocking shot to the gut; by spelling it out, Shyamalan gives us not so much a happy ending but one with emotional closure. Sad things happen for a good reason. 

Except that the good reasons – saving humanity – excuse a god who requires a human sacrifice and the destruction of a family. And the good reasons excuse the abduction and tormenting of a same-sex couple and their young child; it’s an ends justify the means finale that belittles the characters in favor of introducing thematic concerns the film isn’t equipped to handle. And it means those people who used hateful means to get across their rancid method are justified in the end; martyrs to a god not worth serving.    

I still mostly like the film — it’s scary and suspenseful, and some of it is legitimately thoughtful. But that ending leaves a rancid taste in my mouth that grew bitter in the week after seeing the film. Part of that is because it’s a bad ending; another part is because it gives credence to those — like I used to be — who would tell people to give up something that is so crucial to their core without thinking for a second about what we’re really asking.

Coming next week

Big stuff coming up. Early next week, look for a new episode of We’re Watching Here, in which Perry and I talk about Women Talking as well as the Oscar nominations. Next Friday, I’m going to introduce a new podcast element to the newsletter that I’m super excited about. And the following Monday, we’ll jump into a spoiler-filled discussion of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.