Knock at the Cabin makes Cabin in the Woods an even better movie

polygon.com:

M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin (now streaming on Peacock) and Drew Goddard’s The Cabin in the Woods are radically different movies, but they’re also variations on the same idea. Yes, both are mystery-driven thrillers that hide big reveals behind familiar horror genres. (Knock at the Cabin initially looks like a home-invasion thriller; Cabin in the Woods is pretending to be a slasher movie.) But the similarities run deeper. In both movies, protagonists are told they have to die to prevent the apocalypse. In both cases, the people delivering the message are questionably trustworthy. Both movies suggest the same questions: What would you do if you were told you had to sacrifice yourself to save people you don’t know? Is it worth dying in the hope you might save the world, even if you’ll never know whether that’s true?

But Cabin in the Woods has a lot more fun with the question than Knock at the Cabin. The movies reach very different conclusions about the value of sacrifice, and about the trustworthiness of anyone who demands it. They make a perfect double feature. But ultimately, Knock at the Cabin’s biggest value may be that it makes Cabin in the Woods — already a clever, twist-filled, simultaneously scary and hilarious experience for horror fans — even better than it was on its own.

[Ed. note: End spoilers ahead for both Knock at the Cabin and The Cabin in the Woods.]

Cabin in the Woods stands nicely on its own as a meta-commentary on horror movies, a goof on the genre that gets in some solid, creepy scares, while explaining some of horror cinema’s biggest nonsense. Goddard’s film finds reasons for why horny teens in slasher movies are willing to run off into the woods for sex, no matter how many rumors they hear